Medicaid is an integral component of the United States’ health and social safety net, serving the most vulnerable members of society. The Affordable Care Act allowed states to expand Medicaid coverage to previously ineligible populations, though there exists a sizable contingent of states that have opposed doing so.
Most research considers the impact Medicaid expansion has on newly eligible enrollees. Far less is known about the ripple effect expansion has on individuals who were already enrolled. In Tradeoffs, TIE contributing author, Paul Shafer, discusses new research that explores exactly that in Louisiana:
[The authors] used Medicaid claims data to measure the distance traveled from patients’ homes to different care providers before and after expansion. They found that travel distance decreased across the board…The declines were even more pronounced among Black rural Medicaid enrollees, whose trips were on average nearly 10 miles shorter for general practice and 3 miles shorter for primary care after expansion.
Read the full piece here!
Research for this piece was supported by Arnold Ventures.
