Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, November 20
A new report from the National Bureau of Economic Research has calculated that Medicaid expansion has saved the lives of 19,200 adults from 2014-2018. Researchers examined the impact of Medicaid expansion on low-income adult mortality rates in several states as compared to the mortality rates in states that did not expand Medicaid. The study found that starting in 2014, the annual mortality rate in expansion states decreased by 9 deaths per 10,000 people and continued to decrease by 21 deaths per 10,000 people by 2018, indicating that increasing expansion continually benefited adult health outcomes. The researchers demonstrated that the reductions in the mortality rate were driven by a decrease in deaths by preventable causes that improved medical care could help avoid. While thousands of lives were saved in states that expanded coverage, states that did not expand Medicaid had an estimated 15,600 lives lost over the four-year period.
