Medicaid Recipients Report High Satisfaction With The Program

BOSTON, MA — If congressional Republicans enact a health care law that looks anything like the bill passed in the House or the recent bill proposed in the Senate, millions of people would lose out on health coverage provided by Medicaid. Many conservative lawmakers and thinkers have justified this result by saying that even though Medicaid ostensibly provides coverage, the program really offers such measly insurance that it's not a good deal for its recipients.

A new report published Monday, however, may undercut this argument against the program that offers aid to low-income people, pregnant women and people with disabilities. According to the study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, people who receive Medicaid coverage are largely satisfied with the program and rarely struggle to access needed health care services. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

"Our findings confirm that Medicaid programs are fulfilling their mission to provide access to necessary medical care," said assistant professor Michael Barnett who co-authored the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association with associate professor Benjamin Sommers.

They write: "We found that Medicaid enrollees are generally satisfied with their coverage across multiple demographic groups and state expansion choices."

"The debate on the future of Medicaid has largely marginalized a crucial voice: the perspective of enrollees," Barnett added.

This study allowed a large portion of Medicaid enrollees to speak. More than 270,000 recipients responded to a survey from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2014 and 2015 from 46 states, a much larger sample size than many similar studies. More than 74 million people nationwide are enrolled in Medicaid.

Rating the program from 0 to 10, from "worst health care possible" to "best health care possible," the respondents gave the program an average answer of 7.8.

Only 3 percent of respondents said they had trouble getting care because of waiting times or because their health care was rejected. Around 84 percent of respondents said they had been able to get all necessary care in the previous six months; another 83 percent said they had regular access to medical care.

These numbers are not quite as high as those for private insurance or Medicare. According to the authors: "Overall health care satisfaction in Medicaid was in a similar range, though slightly lower, than benchmarks from 2013 CAHPS surveys in other populations, including those with commercial insurance (50.9% with ratings of 9 or 10) and Medicare (8.6 mean satisfaction score)."

They add: "We also found little evidence that low physician participation rates are a key barrier to care for most Medicaid enrollees, consistent with prior studies of access to care in Medicaid."

One drawback of the study, the authors note, is that it does not cover the time period after Medicaid was expanded by Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act. However, reports that looked at satisfaction after Obamacare was implemented have found similarly high rates of satisfaction.

"We found that Medicaid enrollees are largely satisfied with their care, and that few perceive their insurance as a major barrier to care," the authors write. "Changes to Medicaid that would result in millions of beneficiaries losing coverage could have major adverse effects."

Write a letter to the editor of the White House Patch.

Like The White House Patch Facebook Page.

Follow us on Twitter.

ALSO: Trump And World Leaders Agree On Something: Women Entrepreneurs

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images