Linda Gorman, head of the Independence Institute‘s Health Care Policy Center, has written a new issue paper: Medicaid Block Grants and Medicaid Performance [pdf]

Introduction:

Governments at all levels are facing severe fiscal stress, and Medicaid is the largest and fastest growing publicly-funded health program in the United States. State and federal authorities have had little success in controlling Medicaid expenditures with conventional reforms, and changing it from an entitlement program to a block grant program is now under discussion.

This Issue Paper explores how transforming Medicaid into a block grant program offers the promise of improving patient care and restraining the growth in program costs.

Here’s a nice pull-out quote from the paper:

The case for Medicaid block grants is predicated on a … simple proposition: when people spend what they think of as their own money on their own health care, they spend less and get more than if they spend other people’s money.