Mortality Rates Decline in Medicaid Expansion States

A recent study found that states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) saw a decrease in deaths compared to non-expansion states.

Specifically, ” 0.13 percentage point decline in annual mortality, a 9.3 percent reduction over the sample mean” according to the study titled Medicaid and Mortality: New Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data.

Assuming the correlation points to the idea that Medicaid expansion is curbing mortality rates in states that expand Medicaid, as the study concludes, that means that states refusing Medicaid expansion actually led to led to an estimated 15,600 additional deaths since the program was enacted in 2014.

Consider the following excerpt from Vox,

“The researchers found that states that expanded Medicaid saw higher rates of enrollment and lower rates of uninsurance. Among the 55- to 64-year-olds studied, researchers found, receiving Medicaid “reduced the probability of mortality over a 16 month period by about 1.6 percentage points, or a decline of 70 percent.” Based on their findings, they estimate that states’ refusal to expand the program led to 15,600 additional deaths.”

In other words, rejecting Medicaid expansion is more than just political, it has real world impacts not just on access to health insurance, but on the survivability of Americans.