The Buckeye Institute: Incomplete Ohio Department of Medicaid Report Makes Unbiased Assessment of Medicaid Expansion Impossible
Aug 21, 2018Columbus, OH – The Buckeye Institute’s Rea S. Hederman Jr., executive director of the Economic Research Center and vice president of policy, issued the following statement following the release of the 2018 Medicaid Expansion Assessment by the Ohio Department of Medicaid.
“It is impossible to assess the accuracy of the Ohio Department of Medicaid’s claims in its latest assessment report, which does not include even a basic methodology. Unfortunately, without a methodology, this report does little to advance our understanding of the impact of Medicaid expansion.
“What we do know from the 2016 assessment, which also used self-reported surveys, is that the Department of Medicaid was unable to do the analysis it initially planned, ‘because of lower than expected participation from people who were younger, male, and living in metro counties.’ This fact made the 2016 report useless in providing an unbiased quantitative assessment of the impact of Medicaid expansion. If the 2018 report also fails in this regard, this assessment will be similarly unhelpful.”
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