The biggest problem with Obamacare is that it expanded health coverage through Medicaid, a program with notoriously poor access to doctors, because Medicaid pays doctors far less than private insurance. The Senate Republican health care bill aims to change that, by giving states the ability to offer an innovative new model to their poorest residents: direct primary care.

The fact that people enrolled in Medicaid have poor access to physicians is well-documented in the literature (see here and here and here). To take one example, kids with acute asthma attacks on Medicaid only had a 45 percent chance of securing a doctor’s appointment, compared to 100 percent of those with private insurance.

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