Talking Medicaid with Sara Rosenbaum 9pm tonight

Tonight at 9pm eastern time, I will pilot Doctors for America's monthly Policy Call. The call is titled: Medicaid: How It Works and How We Can Improve It. Tonight I'll be leading a conversation with one of the nation's leading Medicaid experts, Sara Rosenbaum of George Washington University.  If you want to listen in, click here for details.

Professor Rosenbaum is the Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor and founding Chair of the Department of Health Policy at The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. Between 1993 and 1994, Professor Rosenbaum worked for President Clinton, directing the legislative drafting of the Health Security Act and developing the Vaccines for Children program. She has also served on the Presidential Transition Team for President-Elect Obama.

She's written a huge number of articles. This recent NEJM commentary is especially pertinent for tonight.

Two quick comments on the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment

From The Reality Based Community and TCF's Taking Note section.

I’ll have more to say about the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment (OHIE) in another venue. (Until then, Naomi Freundlich, Jonathan Cohn, Ezra Klein, Gina Kolata, Austin Frakt, and Aaron Carroll have the study well covered. I envy the unique and timely access, opportunity, and the simple craftsmanship of this experiment. Hats off to the entire OHIE study team.)

For the moment, I want to address one bad argument and one good argument made by conservatives in response to OHIE’s strong findings which document the value of Medicaid coverage for so many people.

Oh–one more thing about misguided talking points. After reading the OHIE results, can liberals please stop claiming that covering the uninsured will reduce emergency department use? Can conservatives please stop claiming that health insurance doesn’t improve health? Deal?