For those people who are looking forward to the government taking control of their medical insurance should look closer at a how Medicaid is operated. One health study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (2005) found that Medicaid health care patients were almost 50 percent more likely to die after coronary artery bypass surgery than patients with private medical insurance coverage or Medicare. Why? The authors suggested this may be a result of poorer long-term, follow-up health care.
Medicaid provides medical insurance to poor and disabled Americans, but often relegates the poor to inferior care. Another study in the journal Ethnicity and Disease (2006) showed that elderly Medicaid patients with unstable angina had worse medical care, partly because they were less likely to get timely interventions or be treated at higher quality hospitals.
Three other recent studies said that Medicaid health care patients presenting with heart attacks or unstable angina received cardiac catheterization less often than private paying medical insurance. The same trend of poor health care can be observed in other diseases. Another study found that patients with Medicaid as their medical insurance were two or three times more likely to die from the disease even after researchers corrected for differences in the location of the tumor and its stage when diagnosed.
