Pw. Newacheck et al., THE ROLE OF MEDICAID IN ENSURING CHILDRENS ACCESS TO CARE, JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, 280(20), 1998, pp. 1789-1793
Context.-Congress enacted a series of laws beginning in the mid 1980s
to expand Medicaid eligibility for children, especially those in poor
families. As a result, Medicaid enrollment of children has nearly doub
led over the past decade. Objective.-To assess the effectiveness of Me
dicaid in improving access to and use of health services by poor child
ren. Design-Analysis of cross-sectional survey data from the 1995 Nati
onal Health Interview Survey. Poor children with Medicaid were compare
d to poor children without insurance and nonpoor children with private
insurance. Setting and Participants.-A total of 29711 children younge
r than 18 years (3716 poor children with Medicaid, 1329 poor children
without insurance, 14 609 nonpoor children with private insurance, and
10 057 children with other combinations of poverty and insurance stat
us) included in a nationally representative stratified probability sam
ple of the US noninstitutionalized population. Main Outcome Measures.-
Usual source of care, access to a regular clinician, unmet health need
s, and use of physician services. Results.-Poor children with Medicaid
compared to poor children without health insurance experienced superi
or access across all measured dimensions of health care, including pre
sence of a usual source of care (95.6% vs 73.8%), frequency of unmet h
ealth needs (2.1% vs 5.9%), and use of medical services (eg, greater t
han or equal to 1 physician contact in past year) (83.9% vs 60.7%). Po
or children with Medicaid compared to nonpoor children with private in
surance used similar levels of physician services (83.9% vs 84%), but
were more likely to have unmet health needs (2.1% vs 0.6%) and were le
ss likely to have a usual source of care (95.6% vs 97.4%). Conclusion.
-Medicaid is associated with improvements in access to care and use of
services. However, there remains room for improvement when Medicaid i
s judged against private health insurance. The Balanced Budget Act of
1997 contains several Medicaid provisions that could stimulate further
improvements in access for poor children.