Two research studies published this month add important data to the fierce political debate over Medicaid in Washington, D.C. Each study — one published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, and the other released as a working paper from the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research — offers evidence that Medicaid, the public insurance program that covers more than 70 million low-income and disabled Americans, is saving people’s lives.
As Congress considers major changes to the program, these findings underscore the importance of treading carefully, said Harvard University economist Amitabh Chandra, who was not involved in either study.
“What we’re learning is that restricting access to Medicaid might save us money, but that comes at a tremendous cost,” Chandra said. “And that cost is human lives.”
Tens of thousands of lives saved
The National Bureau of Economic Research paper, by Angela Wyse, an economist at Dartmouth College, and Bruce Meyer, a University of Chicago economist, focused on the millions of low-income adults who gained Medicaid coverage in states that expanded the program under the Affordable Care Act. After examining a dataset of 37 million people, the authors found:
People who gained Medicaid coverage via the ACA expansion were 21% less likely to die in a given year of enrollment than peers who did not get the health coverage.
States that chose to expand Medicaid saved 27,400 lives between 2010 and 2022.
States that declined to expand Medicaid in 2014 missed the chance to save 12,800 more lives.
The study does not explain how Medicaid expansion had this effect, but prior research has shown the program is linked with improved physical health and reductions in deaths from diseases like diabetes and cancer.
Wyse and Meyer also found that younger adults, who many have long assumed have less to earn from insurance, saw strong life-saving effects from the program, too. The authors suggest that coverage of mental health and substance use treatment for this age group could be key.
