OU-Led Study Examines Impact of Medicaid Expansion on Health Disparities

NORMAN, Okla., Nov. 9, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A research study led by the University of Oklahoma will measure the impact of Medicaid expansion on mortality rates across rural and urban communities as well as across ethnic or racial groups nationwide.

An estimated 82.8 million Americans currently receive health coverage through Medicaid. The passage of the Affordable Care Act, signed into law in 2010, called for the expansion of Medicaid benefits nationwide. After a Supreme Court ruling in 2012 determined that the decision to expand Medicaid benefits would be left to the states, participation in the expanded Medicaid program has grown slowly from 26 states participating in 2014 to 38 states and the District of Columbia participating by 2022.

Research has shown that from 2014-2018, mortality rates were reduced 3.6% more in states that expanded Medicaid than in states that did not. However, the impact of Medicaid expansion on health disparities remained underexamined.

J. Tom Mueller, Ph.D., a research assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma and the lead for the study said, "This project is looking at the impact of Medicaid expansion on disparities in mortality between rural and urban areas, and also then between different ethnic and racial populations within those areas, with the idea being that Medicaid expansion should have reduced mortality disparities. Since poverty is such a dramatic social determinant of health, poverty reduction should be working as a mechanism for disparity reduction."

The researchers will use data sets for the entire United States dating from before the ACA Medicaid expansion, 2008 through 2019, to reduce variables influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. They plan to report their findings at the county level.

Mueller said in addition to insights on how Medicaid expansion may have impacted health disparities, "(the data) could also tell us information about the possible impacts of more broad scale universal health care options in the United States."

The five-year project, "The Effect of Medicaid Expansion on Mortality Disparities and Poverty," is funded by an estimated $1.5 million grant from the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health.

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SOURCE University of Oklahoma