A Short Reminder from the Reality Police

In case anyone needed a Medicaid reality check, there was this from Barbara Edwards, the former head of Medicaid for Ohio: States that plan to tackle the problem of the uninsured by expanding Medicaid and SCHIP programs in their states -- and there are at least a dozen of them -- should jog their short term memory.

The Bush administration, Edwards noted, has been downright hostile to such increases. States are eying Medicaid, in part because low-income adults who do not qualify for Medicaid account for more than half of U.S. residents without health insurance. (That's according to a report recently released by the AARP Public Policy Institute.)

Edwards, who is currently currently a principle with Health Management Associates,  was one of the panel members at a recent Alliance for Health Reform session on Low-Income Adults: Can Medicaid Fill the Coverage Gap? Although panel members came up with various statistics and scenarios to support a tapping into Medicaid for low-income adults, the outlook of the session was pretty negative.

A webcast of the forum is available online at kaisernetwork.org.