Important Study Finds Healthcare Inequality

Medicaid enrollees has much poorer outcomes than patients with private insurance, according to a massive, 1.5 million patient study of stroke patients. But it's probably not due to Medicaid so much as the risk factors the Medicaid population carries.

That doesn't mean hospitals treat people differently based on their insurance status, said Maryam Rahman, M.D., an assistant professor in the UF College of Medicine's department of neurosurgery and the study's principal investigator. Rather, the difference in mortality rates and medical outcomes between Medicaid patients and those with private insurance may be influenced by what happens before they arrive at a hospital.

"This is most likely related to the fact that Medicaid and uninsured patients don't have access to primary preventive care the way insured patients do," Rahman said. "In general, they're going to be a sicker population with higher obesity rates and a greater rate of uncontrolled diabetes. That's going to influence how they do with any diagnosis."