PolitiFact Virginia | Pete Snyder says Medicaid causes higher risk of surgery death

PolitiFact Virginia | Pete Snyder says Medicaid causes higher risk of surgery death

This is the fact check on that VA Medicaid outcomes study that conservatives love to willfully misinterpret:

But researchers place little of the blame on Medicaid.

They noted that Medicaid recipients are the poorest, sickest and least educated group of patients. They are the least likely group to seek preventive health care. As a result, they are more likely to enter hospitals in dire conditions that require emergency surgery.

"Medicaid patients had the highest incidence of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, depression, liver disease, neurologic disorders and psychoses," the study said. "Furthermore, Medicaid patients had the highest incidence of metastatic cancer."

The researchers said that uninsured patients have similar characteristics to Medicaid recipients and that it is "plausible" that both groups may suffer from a "system bias" that limits their access to private hospitals and top physicians.

"For many surgical patients, private insurance status often allows for referral to expert surgeons for their disease," the study said. "Alternatively, Medicaid and uninsured patients may have been referred to less skilled and less specialized surgeons."

Does the research prove, as Snyder and other conservatives suggest, that it’s safer to be uninsured than on Medicaid? Ailawadi, co-author of the study, said it does not.

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