Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Title: Coverage Isn’t Care: An Abundance Agenda for Medicaid
Author-Name: Craig Garthwaite, Timothy Layton
Abstract: This paper provides a broad discussion of efforts to reform Medicaid not
  simply in size but also in its very construction, with a focus on
  maximizing the efficiency of this program. We begin with a high-level
  overview of the current structure of America’s healthcare safety net
  for the poor and disabled, including Medicaid, noting that the piecemeal
  nature of Medicaid’s evolution has created a complex program bringing
  together various populations, providers, operating models, and revenue
  streams. We then briefly examine implications of recently proposed
  reforms to this system, which largely hold the structure of the program
  fixed and focus on marginal changes to financing and eligibility. In the
  final part of the paper, we propose a broader and more fundamental set
  of reforms that acknowledge that Medicaid’s contemporary size and
  scope require a different structure than those of its smaller historical
  predecessors. We propose policies that foster lower-cost-structure
  business models for safety-net healthcare providers in order to expand
  the number of these providers and more aggressively steer Medicaid
  patients to them. The goal is to use Medicaid’s existing funding to
  provide easy access to basic healthcare services provided by a more
  abundant supply of safety-net healthcare facilities that work
  exclusively (or almost exclusively) with patients from this program.
Creation-Date: 2025-12-01
Keywords: health economics, industrial organization, Medicaid
File-URL: https://www.economicstrategygroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Coverage-Isnt-Care-An-Abundance-Agenda-for-Medicaid.pdf
File-Format: Application/PDF
Handle: RePEc:cxx:wpaper:coverage-isnt-care-an-abundance-agenda-for-medicaid