Report Says Experience of CHIP Hints at Impact of Medicaid Expansion on Providers
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Enrollment in public health insurance coverage will expand significantly beginning in 2014. At this time there is only a limited understanding of what happens when an influx of newly insured patients encounters a relatively fixed supply of providers. Will they choose to work longer hours to accommodate the increase in demand? The experience of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) offers a preview of how providers might respond to the expansion.
According to a report in the Medicare & Medicaid Research Review, researchers from the Government Accountability Office and the Washington-based Center for Studying Health System Change found that the creation of the Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1997 did not create a deluge of patients that the nation’s pediatricians couldn’t handle. Read more here.