The “Perspective” section in the New England Journal of Medicine — probably the world’s foremost medical journal — isn’t technically an official editorial. But week after week the NEJM publishes advocacy pieces pushing the hard left-wing agendas (such as banning natural gas to combat global warming) favored by the editors and much of the medical establishment.
This week, the journal pushes a scheme to massively expand the depth and breadth of Medicaid, the godawful health-insurance plan for the poor, as “a key strategy for achieving greater fairness for Black, Latinx, and Native American children.” (The term “Latinx” is an irritating woke bit of word engineering, cultural appropriation not coming from the Latino/Latina community itself. But I digress.)
From, “Medicaid and Child Health Equity:”
Making Medicaid work better for all children offers a strategy for achieving greater health equity among children now and as these children age into adulthood. We believe that Medicaid should be expanded to cover all children from birth through 21 years of age. Among children with employer-sponsored coverage, Medicaid would serve as a secondary payer for those whose special health care needs exceed limits on care imposed by plans.
More:
We also believe that the federal government should assume full financial responsibility for Medicaid for children, which would ease the fiscal pressures that cause states to reduce enrollment or impose burdensome renewal requirements. Finally, to lessen stigma and increase provider participation, Medicaid payments should parallel national Medicare standards.
Of course there is no mention of the cost, which would be almost unquantifiable.
Consider: More than 80 million people living in the country are age 19 and under, so we are talking about covering roughly 90 million on Medicaid. Also, note that the term “all children” would also include illegal aliens, adding millions more to the rolls and a huge incentive for destitute people to risk the terrible dangers of sneaking into the country.
Nor do the authors seem to care that Medicaid for every young person in the country would create a budget-busting incentive for families who have the ability to pay for their own health insurance to just leave it to the feds. And they don’t even try to estimate the cost of increasing Medicaid physician compensation to (already inadequate) Medicare levels.
Not to mention that the universal Medicaid plan would cover every adult in the country ages 18-21.
The U.S. needs to improve its health-care system. But the medical establishment seems utterly uninterested in investigating the efficacy potential of free-market systems and is indifferent to the important principle that we should be primarily responsible for taking care of our own needs — with social safety nets reserved for those who, due to no fault of their own, can’t.
It’s hard to believe that the medical establishment once opposed Medicare. Today, it is all-in for socialized health-care systems — including rationing — whether they are good for us or not.