Medicaid payments to doctors will likely be targeted next year as an effort to save costs:

“No states like to cut provider payments,” Dr. Smith said. “But it is perhaps one of the first places states would turn to because it is a real savings.”

Idiocy. As always, the wonks take the short-sighted approach that will do nothing to save money.

Medicaid rates are already so low, it’s essentially charity care. As patients can tell you, finding doctors that take Medicaid is already an exercise in futility.

Cutting payments will lead to more physicians dropping Medicaid, forcing patients to go without care or to the emergency room.

That can only further raise, not lower, health care costs.