Findings from North Carolina State University (NC State) Broaden Understanding of Agricultural Economics (The Impact of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansions On Agricultural Workers’ Health Insurance Coverage, Medical Care Utilization, …): Economics – Agricultural Economics

2021 NOV 01 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- Investigators publish new report on Economics - Agricultural Economics. According to news originating from Raleigh, North Carolina, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Nearly 30% of documented agricultural workers, that is, those who are authorized to work in the U.S. and may be eligible for government-sponsored Medicaid coverage, lacked health insurance coverage in 2016. We estimate the impact of the 2014 state-level Medicaid expansions that were part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on farm workers’ health insurance coverage, health care utilization, and labor supply.”

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from North Carolina State University (NC State), “Using confidential individual-level data from the National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) for the decade between 2007 and 2016, we employ a difference-in-differences econometric model to compare workers in states that expanded Medicaid in 2014 to workers in states that did not. We find that, following the ACA Medicaid expansions, documented agricultural workers experience a 12-percentage point (24%) increase in the likelihood of having health insurance, which is entirely driven by an increase in the likelihood of having a government-sponsored health insurance plan. We do not detect a decrease in private (employer-sponsored or worker-acquired) health insurance coverage. Further, we find no evidence that the ACA Medicaid expansions led to a decline in farm workers’ labor supply; in fact, our results imply that there was a small increase in farm workers’ hours.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “In a number of falsification tests, we also show that the Medicaid expansions do not appear to have an impact on undocumented (unauthorized) farm workers’ health care utilization, and there was no increase in Medicaid payments for health services among this group of farm workers who were largely ineligible for Medicaid.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: The Impact of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansions On Agricultural Workers’ Health Insurance Coverage, Medical Care Utilization, and Labor Supply. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2021. American Journal of Agricultural Economics can be contacted at: Wiley, 111 River St, Hoboken 07030-5774, NJ, USA. (Oxford University Press - http://www.oup.com/; American Journal of Agricultural Economics - ajae.oxfordjournals.org)

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from Ivan T. Kandilov, North Carolina State University (NC State), Dept. of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Box 8109, Raleigh, NC 27695, United States.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12263. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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