Austin sent me an email this morning with the same information he put in his previous post. As you can imagine, the continued assertion that having Medicaid is worse than being uninsured is a sore point with us.
So I took it upon myself to go look up citation “22” in Rep. Ryan’s budget proposal. That’s the one that follows the quotation Austin reprinted in his post. It’s “Ibid.” (page 40)
Unless someone tells me otherwise, that means that the source is the same as the previous citation, “21”. That is (page 39):
Trapp, Doug. “Low Medicare, Medicaid Pay Rates Impact Private Costs.” American Medical News, January 5, 2009 http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2009/01/05/gvsb0105.htm (accessed March 31, 2011).
I went ahead and checked that source out. It’s a short argument about cost-shifting (which Austin already addressed here). But more importantly, it has little to do with outcomes, and absolutely does not say that you’re better off being uninsured than on Medicaid.
Maybe we care about this more than the average person, but did anyone else check the citations? Does the press? Or do they just take someone’s word for it when they make a controversial statement and then say “Ibid”?
