Studies Conducted at Harvard University School of Medicine on Antidotes Recently Reported (The impact of expanded Medicaid eligibility on access to naloxone)

Health Policy and Law Daily

2019 JUL 03 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- Current study results on Drugs and Therapies - Antidotes have been published. According to news reporting from Boston, United States, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “Federal, state and local US governments have sought interventions to reduce deaths due to opioid overdoses by increasing the availability of naloxone. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) expanded Medicaid coverage to low-income, childless adults, potentially giving this group financial access to naloxone.”

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from the Harvard University School of Medicine, “The aims of this paper are: (1) to describe the changes in the amount of Medicaid-covered naloxone used between 2009 and 2016 and (2) to quantify the differential change in the amount of dispensed naloxone between states that expanded their Medicaid programs and states that did not. A quasi-experimental approach based on states’ ongoing choice to expand their Medicaid program to all adults with incomes between 100 and 138% of the federal poverty line (FPL), starting in 2014. As of 2018, 37 states had expanded and 14 states had not. Estimation of the policy impact relies on a difference-in-difference method. US state Medicaid programs. Data are from the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program and include all dispensed prescriptions of naloxone through the Medicaid program. State/quarters with fewer than 10 prescriptions are suppressed; n=1632. Prior to Medicaid expansion, the number of Medicaid-covered naloxone prescriptions was very similar in expansion and non-expansion states. On average, states that expanded Medicaid had 78.2 (95% confidence interval=16.0-140.3, p=0.02) more prescriptions per year for naloxone compared with states that did not expand Medicaid coverage, a nearly 10 increase over the pre-expansion years. Medicaid expansion contributed to this growth in Medicaid-covered naloxone more than other state-level naloxone policies. Medicaid accounts for approximately a quarter of naloxone sales.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Medicaid expansion generated 8.3% of the growth in naloxone units from 2009 to 2016, holding other factors constant.”

For more information on this research see: The impact of expanded Medicaid eligibility on access to naloxone. Addiction, 2019;():. Addiction can be contacted at: Blackwell Publishing Inc, 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA. (Wiley-Blackwell - http://www.wiley.com/; Addiction - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1360-0443)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting R.G. Frank, Dept. of Health Care Policy, School of Medicine, Boston, MA, United States.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1111/add.14634. 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.