Reports from Columbia University Advance Knowledge in Medicaid (Early Medicaid Expansion Associated With Reduced Payday Borrowing In California)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Weekly News -- Investigators publish new report on Medicare and Medicaid - Medicaid. According to news reporting from New York City, New York, by VerticalNews journalists, research stated, "We examined the impact of California's early Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act on the use of payday loans, a form of high-interest borrowing used by low- and middle-income Americans. Using a data set for the period 2009-13 (roughly twenty-four months before and twenty-four months after the 2011-12 Medicaid expansion) that covered the universe of payday loans from five large payday lenders with locations around the United States, we used a difference-in-differences research design to assess the effect of the expansion on payday borrowing, comparing trends in early-expansion counties in California to those in counties nationwide that did not expand early."

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from Columbia University, "The early Medicaid expansion was associated with an 11 percent reduction in the number of loans taken out each month. It also reduced the number of unique borrowers each month and the amount of payday loan debt. We were unable to determine precisely how and for whom the expansion reduced payday borrowing, since to our knowledge, no data exist that directly link payday lending to insurance status."

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: "Nonetheless, our results suggest that Medicaid reduced the demand for high-interest loans and improved the financial health of American families."

For more information on this research see: Early Medicaid Expansion Associated With Reduced Payday Borrowing In California. Health Affairs, 2017;36(10):1769-1776. Health Affairs can be contacted at: Project Hope, 7500 Old Georgetown Rd, Ste 600, Bethesda, MD 20814-6133, USA.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting H. Allen, Columbia University, Sch Social Work, New York, NY 10027, United States. Additional authors for this research include A. Swanson, J.L. Wang and T. Gross.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2017.0369. 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.

Keywords for this news article include: New York City, New York, United States, North and Central America, Medicare and Medicaid, Health Policy, Columbia University.

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