Georgia publicly touts its Medicaid experiment as a success. Numbers tell a different story. - The Current
thecurrentga.org
In January, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp boasted that his experiment in Medicaid reform was a success, despite low enrollment numbers. Yet a report commissioned by the state and not yet publicly released suggested otherwise.

cross-posted from: https://ponder.cat/post/1693090

  • Price of Independence: Georgia’s experimental alternative to Medicaid expansion has cost taxpayers more than $86 million.
  • Enrollment Shortfall: Only 6,500 participants have enrolled in the first 18 months of the program — roughly 75% fewer than the state had estimated for year one.
  • Work Slowdown: The state found it difficult to verify that people are working to keep their benefits, so Georgia has gone from monthly checks to annual ones.
  • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    4 days ago

    Government services shouldn’t be profit centers. 13k (yeah I did the math) for patients with a lot of medical issues on Medicaid doesn’t sound bad to me. It actually sounds like public good.

    • grue@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      32·
      4 days ago

      Who said anything about “patients with a lot of medical issues?” That $13k is an average across all of them, including the healthy ones. For that, $13k is an absolutely insane amount to spend on healthcare (especially by worldwide standards instead of ridiculous American ones), insurance or not.

        • grue@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          11·
          4 days ago

          The fuck are you talking about? People are on Medicaid because they’re poor – it has nothing to do with how healthy they are.

          • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            3·
            3 days ago

            While you’re correct, 13k for current base as a initial development cost is pretty good. They’re correct about that regardless of health status. engineering is expensive and the initial development always is a huge sink.

            86mil pretty cheap for a platform. Startups will burn through about 10mil before flaring out

            • grue@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
              11·
              3 days ago

              Sure, except that we could’ve just signed onto Federal medicaid expansion for free.

              • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                1·
                3 days ago

                smile separate topic. You’re against the approach from the get go, and thats fine. My point is that as far as experiments and building systems this was fairly cheap.

                Better they waste time failing with these experiments than figuring out How to murder various minority groups. And who knows maybe they’ll find a workable approach.