Report Says Experience of CHIP Hints at Impact of Medicaid Expansion on Providers

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.