> Medicaid provides more comprehensive benefits than private insurance at significantly lower out-of-pocket cost to beneficiaries, but its lower payment rates to health care providers and lower administrative costs make the program very efficient. It costs Medicaid much less than private insurance to cover people of similar health status. For example, adults on Medicaid cost about 22 percent less than if they were covered by private insurance, Urban Institute research shows.
> Over the past 30 years, Medicaid costs per beneficiary have essentially tracked costs in the health care system as a whole, public and private. In fact, costs per beneficiary grew more slowly for Medicaid than for private insurance between 1987 and 2017, and are expected to continue growing more slowly than for private insurance in coming years, according to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission.
Right, healthcare costs have been growing faster than overall inflation for many years and the industry now constitutes 17.6% of GDP. If it goes much higher it's going to start displacing more essential industries. So obviously costs will eventually be cut somehow. That will probably be some combination of care rationing, provider wage cuts, and prescription drug price fixing. Regardless of whether anyone thinks those measures are good ideas or not, the math is inescapable. My guess is that the crisis will come when large self-insured employers refuse to continue absorbing most of the annual cost increases for employee health plans.
Medicaid is reportedly well run, though? Yes, it is a big number, but it has not been the source of any budget problems. Quite the contrary, it has been a good lever in controlling health care costs.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/correcting-seven-myths-about-m...
> Medicaid provides more comprehensive benefits than private insurance at significantly lower out-of-pocket cost to beneficiaries, but its lower payment rates to health care providers and lower administrative costs make the program very efficient. It costs Medicaid much less than private insurance to cover people of similar health status. For example, adults on Medicaid cost about 22 percent less than if they were covered by private insurance, Urban Institute research shows.
> Over the past 30 years, Medicaid costs per beneficiary have essentially tracked costs in the health care system as a whole, public and private. In fact, costs per beneficiary grew more slowly for Medicaid than for private insurance between 1987 and 2017, and are expected to continue growing more slowly than for private insurance in coming years, according to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission.