A Frog Slowly Boiling in Water: The Recent History of Medicaid Payments

To keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result is insane. Nevertheless, physicians still think that by lobbying the government for higher fees, they will succeed in improving the government's unwillingness to pay them adequately.

One would think that the history of Government health programs would lead physicians to conclude that they should be wound down, not ramped up. This is not the case. The American Medical Association, for example, calls upon Government to increase "outreach and enrolment" for Medicaid.

A new article in Health Affairs quantifies what we have known for a long time: Medicaid's payments to physicians are falling behind. They didn't even keep up with inflation during the period, increasing by 15% over the five years to 2008, versus inflation of 20%.

And yet doctors keep cheering when politicians fragment and hinder our access to coverage by expanding government-run health programs. It's remarkably self-destructive.