This Is Exactly What Health Care Reform Is Supposed to Do
by Amy Payne and Kelsey Harris, Heritage Foundation, December 23, 2013
Imagine waking up from a coma to find that both of your legs and your left hand are gone.
After a motorcycle accident that nearly killed him, this was Moise Brutus’s devastating reality. And he had to navigate the broken Medicaid system to try to recover. Now, he calls those days “the dark times.”
>>> Watch our video to find out why Moise calls his time on old Medicaid “the dark times”
Medicaid wasn’t working for Moise. His extremely difficult injuries meant that he had specific challenges and needs. But as he says, the old government program was a “one-size-fits-all” model.
Thankfully, Moise lived in Florida, which was trying out some reforms to Medicaid. He was able to switch out of the old Medicaid program into a private plan—and that changed his life.
The private plan gave Moise an individually tailored approach to his needs.
“That’s when everything started to get better for me,” he says. He was able to get “the best care, the best prosthetics, the best of everything.”
Ultimately, the higher quality of care empowered Moise with the rehabilitation and motivation he needed to get his life back. He’s now training for the Paralympic cycling team.
“Health care reform” is an abstract phrase. It means many things to many people. But for Moise Brutus, Medicaid reform was the key to a new beginning in life.
This is exactly why Heritage has supported reforms to Medicaid that would give every patient the type of care Moise was able to get. Everyone deserves to have his or her health needs addressed in an individual way.
It’s one thing to talk about the fact that Medicaid provides substandard care. It’s another to hear a story like Moise’s and see how that can make the difference in someone recovering from a traumatic event.
Obamacare merely makes Medicaid worse by dumping millions more people into this broken program. Heritage supports reforms that would subsidize private health insurance for low-income Medicaid beneficiaries.
Learn more what Congress and the states could do to bring personalized care to low-income Americans.
Read the Morning Bell and more en español every day at Heritage Libertad.
Quick Hits: