By Jack Bernard
The Wall Street Journal, Letters, March 29, 2016
Re: Dr. Scott Atlas’s “How to Fix the Scandal of Medicaid and the Poor” (op-ed, March 16):
Dr. Atlas is correct about many of the problems faced by Medicaid, but his cure is worse than the disease. The fact is the poor canāt afford to go the high-deductible or health-savings-account route. Yes, they will ask for less care, as Dr. Atlas states, but he seems to forget that people donāt go to doctors for the joy of the experience. They go because they are ill.
A more effective direction would be to expand the Medicare program by moving these individuals into it. In fact, if you examine per capita health expenditures of the U.S. versus other developed nations, our costs are much higher because we do not have national universal health insurance — Medicare for all.
Jack Bernard is a former head of health planning for Georgia. He resides in Peachtree City, Ga.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/better-care-for-the-poor-more-return-on-cost-1459176633