New Findings from Wright State University Update Understanding of Medicare and Medicaid (Identifying Associations Between State Medicaid Expansion…

Managed Care Weekly Digest

New Findings from Wright State University Update Understanding of Medicare and Medicaid (Identifying Associations Between State Medicaid Expansion Decisions and Spatial Disparities in County Insurance Rate Changes Under the Affordable Care Act)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Managed Care Weekly Digest -- Researchers detail new data in Medicare and Medicaid. According to news reporting originating in Dayton, Ohio, by NewsRx editors, the research stated, "By the end of 2014, twenty-four states rejected Medicaid expansion, providing a unique opportunity to examine changes in insurance coverage rates after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act within and between states that did versus did not expand Medicaid. Using multilevel regression analyses of county-level non-elderly adult small area health insurance estimates (N = 3135) from the US Census Bureau, several important findings emerge."

Financial support for this research came from Population Research Institute at Penn State, which receives center core funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (see also Medicare and Medicaid).

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from Wright State University, "Compared to counties located in states that did not expand Medicaid, counties located in states that did expand experienced significantly larger increases in adult health insurance coverage rates between 2013 and 2014, net of the county baseline insurance coverage rate, socioeconomic and demographic composition, and labor market characteristics. In states that did not expand Medicaid, counties with larger shares of vulnerable residents (i.e., poor adults and low education) experienced lagging improvements in health insurance coverage. However, counties in states that expanded Medicaid were protected from several of these exacerbated disparities, and in some cases, experienced larger insurance coverage improvements than counties with less disadvantaged populations."

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: "These findings suggest that although insurance coverage increased in nearly all counties between 2013 and 2014, increases would have been larger and disparities would have been further alleviated if more states with highly concentrated vulnerable populations had expanded Medicaid."

For more information on this research see: Identifying Associations Between State Medicaid Expansion Decisions and Spatial Disparities in County Insurance Rate Changes Under the Affordable Care Act. Population Research and Policy Review, 2017;36(1):109-135. Population Research and Policy Review can be contacted at: Springer, Van Godewijckstraat 30, 3311 Gz Dordrecht, Netherlands. (Springer - www.springer.com; Population Research and Policy Review - www.springerlink.com/content/0167-5923/)

Our news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained by contacting D.C. Rhubart, Wright State University, Dept. of Sociol & Anthropol, Dayton, OH 45435, United States.

Keywords for this news article include: Dayton, Ohio, United States, North and Central America, Medicare and Medicaid, Health Insurance, Health Policy, Medicaid, Wright State University.