- Medicaid expansion may lower death rates, study says, By Pam Belluck, July 25, 2012, New York Times: “Into the maelstrom of debate over whether Medicaid should cover more people comes a new study by Harvard researchers who found that when states expanded their Medicaid programs and gave more poor people health insurance, fewer people died. The study, published online Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, comes as states are deciding whether to expand Medicaid by 2014 under the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration’s health care law. The Supreme Court ruling on the law last month effectively gave states the option of accepting or rejecting an expansion of Medicaid that had been expected to add 17 million people to the program’s rolls…”
- Study: New Medicaid expansion could be a lifesaver, By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar (AP), July 26, 2012, Columbus Dispatch: “States that expand their Medicaid programs under President Barack Obama’s health care law may end up saving thousands of lives, a medical journal report released yesterday indicates. Until now, the Medicaid debate has been about budgets and states’ rights. But a statistical study by Harvard researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine found a 6 percent drop in the adult death rate in Arizona, Maine and New York, three states that have recently expanded coverage for low-income residents along the general lines of the federal health care law. The study found that for every 176 adults covered under expanded Medicaid, one death per year would be prevented…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty