Why Medicare needs to be equitably included in an Oregon single-payer system.

A single-payer plan should equitably include Medicare-eligible Oregonians, because not doing so

1.    Will create inequities that will cause harm to seniors, people with disabilities, and rural Oregonians;
2.    Will lead to high administrative costs, wasting taxpayer money, and may make it cost-prohibitive; and
3.    Will not garner necessary support from a sufficient number of Oregonians.

Click here to see the full white paper.

Overhead in Medicaid managed care organizations

Many states use Medicaid managed care organizations (MCOs) in there Medicaid programs. The notion is that they can better control costs. An analysis of the data shows that is not the case. Instead, MCO use tends to increase expenditures by 11% on the portion of expenditures that flow through MCOs.

The use of MCOs in Medicaid has, on average, no effect on personal health care expenditures. The overhead in MCOs themselves averages 12% to 14%, while government overhead drops 1% to 3% on the portion of expenditures flowing through MCOs. The net result is an increase in expenditures of 11% on the portion that flows through MCOs.

The details of this analysis can be viewed in this white paper, which looks at MCO overhead in Medicaid programs in four different ways.