By Jennifer M. McGivney
Two LTSS Center researchers have been educating policymakers, advocates, and the public about how Medicaid cuts will impact beneficiaries.
This spring and summer, proposed changes to Medicaid were touted as a way to create a more efficient and ethical system. Yet much was misunderstood about the immediate and long-term consequences of these changes.
To educate policymakers, advocates, and the public, Marc Cohen and Jane Tavares—both with the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston—shared their research about what these cuts would mean for beneficiaries, particularly older adults.
“As a research center, our role is to produce research that informs the policy and practice debate,” says Cohen. “Our research and analysis looking at the implications of policy changes is often used by advocates to put forward a more effective case based on empirical data and evidence. And this is as it should be, given that the LTSS Center’s tagline is, ‘Research bridging policy and practice.’ This work is in direct service to that mission.”
The researchers’ supply of analysis met its demand. One of their articles, Why Do Cuts to Medicaid Matter for Americans Over 65?, has already been read more than 100,000 times, after being reprinted in such outlets as the Philadelphia Inquirer and Katie Couric Media. In addition, Newsweek, NPR, KFF Health News, and Scientific American have cited their research.
Cohen and Tavares’s analyses showed that some proposals, such as the Medicaid work requirement, would create effects far different than what some expected.
“If you tell the average person that there may be a work requirement on Medicaid—and if you don’t understand who that impacts and what that means—it may sound good,” Tavares says. “But when people understand exactly what a work requirement is—how it functions, who it impacts, what happens when you put it in place—then no one wants it anymore. They realize what it would mean to implement this and how it impacts far more people than those the policy is aimed at.”
In their analyses, Cohen and Tavares used data from the Health and Retirement Study, published by the U.S. Census Bureau. The report includes data that’s been collected for more than 20 years on retirement status, health status, and the use of government benefits. Cohen calls it “the gold standard for aging research.”
“As researchers, we have replication in mind, so we are really good about saying, ‘Here’s my data source, this is how I measured it, and this is what was accounted for,’” Tavares says. “We’re trained from day one to put enough detail into our research so that someone else can do it, too.”
This nonpartisan work is dedicated to showing how policy changes will affect the patient experience, says Cohen.
“What is the purpose of a health care system? It’s to produce good health,” Cohen says. “When you make it harder for people to pay, when you make it harder for people to find services, the health care system produces poorer health outcomes. One must ask: What will these cuts accomplish at the end of the day?”
Recent Articles of Note
Read some of the recent articles Marc Cohen and Jane Tavares have co-authored or been quoted in:
- Are 5 Million Nondisabled Medicaid Recipients Watching TV All Day? That’s Unsupported (KFF Health News)
- When You Lose Your Health Insurance, You May Also Lose Your Primary Doctor – and That Hurts Your Health (The Conversation)
- History Repeats? Faced With Medicaid Cuts, States Reduced Support For Older Adults and Disabled People (Health Affairs Forefront)
- Who is Affected by Medicaid Work Requirements? It’s Not Who You Think (The Milbank Quarterly)
- Why Do Cuts to Medicaid Matter for Americans Over 65? 2 Experts on Aging Explain Why Lives are at Stake (The Conversation)
- The Fundamental Flaw in “How Workers Spend Their Time” (Geiger Gibson Program at George Washington University)
- Who are “Able-Bodied” Non-Working Medicaid Beneficiaries? (Infographics)