Medicaid Enrollees Have Worse Health Outcomes Than People Without Medical Insurance: Obamacare Expansion Of Medicaid Eligibility To The Uninsured Was A Cruel Sham Of Fewer Doctors And Poorer Results: Replace Obamacare Medicaid Expansion With Private Insurance And Improve Health Outcomes

From The Wall Street Journal, "How to Say Goodbye to ObamaCare: First, Republicans must abandon Democrats’ definition of success." by James Freeman:

Perhaps radical surgery will be needed, because the other awkward fact is that enrolling people in Medicaid means they will have fewer doctors available to treat them and worse health outcomes than people with private insurance—and often even worse than people without any insurance at all. Long before he became the head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Scott Gottlieb wrote on this subject for the Journal in 2011. He described some of the relevant research:

• Major surgical procedures: A 2010 study of 893,658 major surgical operations performed between 2003 to 2007, published in the Annals of Surgery, found that being on Medicaid was associated with the longest length of stay, the most total hospital costs, and the highest risk of death. Medicaid patients were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital than those with private insurance. By comparison, uninsured patients were about 25% less likely than those with Medicaid to have an “in-hospital death.” Another recent study found similar outcomes for Medicaid patients undergoing trauma surgery.

• Poor outcomes after heart procedures: A 2011 study of 13,573 patients, published in the American Journal of Cardiology, found that people with Medicaid who underwent coronary angioplasty (a procedure to open clogged heart arteries) were 59% more likely to have “major adverse cardiac events,” such as strokes and heart attacks, compared with privately insured patients. Medicaid patients were also more than twice as likely to have a major, subsequent heart attack after angioplasty as were patients who didn’t have any health insurance at all.