One more victim of Medicaid and employer-based insurance
December 2nd, 2009 | by Brian Schwartz |John R. Graham of the Pacific Research Institute offers a great critique of Nicholas D. Kristof’s recent New York Times column. Kristof relates a distressing story about a John Brodniak, who lost his job due to illness, exhausted his COBRA benefits, and ended up on Medicaid. Yet, Kristof reaches an odd conclusion. A couple of excerpts:
In today’s column, he parrots a discredited study, which asserts that 45,000 Americans die from lack of insurances (which is already debunked, along with the entire literature on “mortality due to insurance” here).
Kristof notes that the man could not get on his wife’s plan, even though he had had continuous coverage and it seems inconsistent with Oregon law:
My reading of Oregon law indicates that an employer does not have to offer any dependent coverage. However, if it does, he has to cover all dependents without differentiation. Because his wife was already covered, and he had continuous creditable coverage and exhausted COBRA. both Oregon and federal law should ensure that the man would get coverage.
And a great conclusion:
tags: employer-sponsored insurance, Oregon, pre-existing conditionsMy point is that Mr. Kristof knows that the man is enrolled in Oregon Medicaid! And the man cannot find a specialist to treat him because reimbursement is too low. From this, Mr. Kristof concludes that we need more government-centered health care.
