Editorial: The evidence-based reality of health care reform : Stltoday

Editorial: The evidence-based reality of health care reform : Stltoday

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But the savings would come at a price — 6 million fewer people would gain insurance coverage under Medicaid, the federal-state program that covers certain low-income Americans. The CBO estimates that 3 million of these people — most of them adults — would be able to buy subsidized insurance through state insurance exchanges created by the ACA. That leaves a net 3 million fewer people who will be covered than the 33 million envisioned in the new law.

The good news is that it will save the government $84 billion over 10 years. The bad news is that the cost of whatever health care these 3 million get, usually in hospital emergency rooms, will continue to be shifted onto those with private insurance in the form of higher premiums.
Even worse news: According to estimates in a study published online Wednesday by The New England Journal of Medicine, for each 500,000 adults who fail to gain access to Medicaid, 2,840 more deaths can be expected each year.

Thus, eliminating access to Medicaid for 3 million adults can be expected to contribute to 17,000 premature deaths each year — roughly equal to the fatalities from six 9/11-style terrorist attacks or 2.6 times the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Every year.