State Efforts Toward Universal Coverage: Part 2 of a series

One way or the other, most states are searching for strategies to expand health care coverage. Employer mandates, aggregate purchasing power, new taxes, limiting benefits, expanding Medicaid, consumer-directed care, and cost controls are the tools they’re using. Unfortunately, states seem to see providers as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. As states play Robin Hood, taxing physician and hospital revenues to provide coverage for the poor, it is hard to see how specialists will derive benefit from treating patients with subpar insurance-unless Dr. Crumley is right, and the physicians who eschew Medicaid and other lowly payers start to pay their share.

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