Oregon Study: Medicaid ‘Had No Significant Effect’ On Health Outcomes vs. Being Uninsured
This is surprising, even to me. Maybe it’s because I still have a left0ver Socialist streak in me from my liberal days when it comes to health care.
So, what did the Oregon study authors find? They found no statistically significant difference in elevated blood pressure (1.33 percent less incidence in Medicaid vs. control, p=0.65); high cholesterol (2.43 percent less than control, p=0.37); high HbA1c (0.93 percent less, p=0.61); or Framingham risk score (0.21 percent less than control, p=0.76). According to the p values, the blood pressure result has a 65 percent chance, the cholesterol result a 37 percent chance, the HbA1c result a 61 percent chance, and the Framingham score a 76 percent chance of being statistical noise. Again, statistical significance requires a p value of less than 0.05.
I think it’s critical for those of us who tend to be political ideologues to try to act based on the evidence and not on our beliefs whenever possible, to maintain a balance between completely closed minds and those that are so open our brains fall out. It isn’t easy, and we’re only human, but we need to try.
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