Serves Those Slacker Asthmatic Kids Right

As the Supreme Court fiddles while Rome burns, I thought it was a good time to point to this news about a recent University of Minnesota study:

School-age children received less asthma medication when their parents had to pay more of the cost, according to a study released Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers led by the University of Minnesota's Pinar Karaca-Mandic reviewed insurance claims for more than 8,000 asthmatic children ages 5 to 18. The children also ended up in the hospital with asthma-related complications more often when their families bore higher out-of-pocket costs.

"These children aren't getting the medicine they need, which can spell serious long-term trouble for them," said Karaca-Mandic, of the School of Public Health. "The results signal one of the true impacts of rising insurance costs."

-- Jeremy Olson, Star Tribune

So conservative economists can keep telling themselves that co-pays have only positive effects, making people more responsible consumers of health care, but we know that it's not that simple.