Medicaid's awful results: Column

Medicaid's awful results: Column:
"Coverage isn't care, notes Roy -- and in the case of Medicaid, coverage may be worse than not being covered.

That's because extensive research indicates that Medicaid recipients actually do worse than people without any insurance at all. 
A University of Virginia study found that Medicaid patients hospitalized for major surgery were actually 13% more likely to die in the hospital than those without any health insurance.
Likewise, the National Cancer Institute found that late-stage prostate cancer, late-stage breast cancer, and late-stage melanoma were actually much more common in Medicaid recipients than in the uninsured.
And a Johns Hopkins study of patients receiving lung transplants found that Medicaid patients were 29% more likely to die within three years."
...Why Medicaid recipients do worse isn't entirely clear, but it's likely because the best doctors seldom accept Medicaid, leaving patients with subpar physicians. 
In addition, Roy opens with the story of Deamonte Driver, a seventh grader with a tooth abscess who wound up dying when it turned into a brain infection, after being shuffled from doctor to doctor for weeks. Uninsured patients probably go straight to the Emergency Room or to a free clinic, while Medicaid recipients may waste precious days, weeks, or months trying to navigate the bureaucracy.