Insurance Copays and Death
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I–VT) claims that a Republican plan to raise health insurance “copayments for poor people” is a “death sentence.”
IN FACT, the Republican plan lowers the max copay for Medicaid recipients who are not poor from $100 to $35 and requires states that charge them no copays to at least charge something. Numerous studies indicate this will prevent waste and won’t harm anyone’s health, much less kill them:
- A gold standard randomized controlled trial conducted by Rand Corporation found that health insurance copays prevent medical spending that has “little or no” effect on health outcomes except for the poorest 6% of the population, which the Republican plan doesn’t affect.
- A study published by the American Journal of Public Health analyzed insurance coverage levels and health outcomes of “an older, chronically ill population” and found “no association between cost sharing and health status,” just like other studies that “have also failed to observe any negative health effect from cost sharing.”
- Gold standard randomized controlled trials published by the journal Science and the New England Journal of Medicine found that no-copay Medicaid coverage increases expensive visits to emergency rooms for “conditions that may be most readily treatable in primary care settings,” contrary to Barack Obama’s claim that the opposite would occur.
- A meta-analysis of studies published by the Annals of Family Medicine found that “social and behavioral factors account for substantially more of the variability in premature mortality than health care does.”
- A study published by the journal Health Services Research found “no indication that lack of insurance has any effect” on people who died of causes that are generally preventable with better healthcare.
