People on Medicaid claim to value the services at only 1/5 of their cost. If you taking that estimate at face value, if you shut down medicaid entirely and just paid each former recipient 20% of the price you'd been paying to provide health insurance, they would be better off. You can debate those numbers and methodology, but it's very suggestive, and very real.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/07/med...