Medicaid expansion may lower the death rates

A study published under the New England Journal of Medicine says, “States that expanded their Medicaid program had a death rate lower than the states didn’t expand their Medicaid program.”

Medicaid is a government run healthcare program known as “CMS” (centers for Medicare and Medicaid services). “Under the program for poor and disabled people Medicaid is covering 60 million Americans currently. By intensifying the Medicaid under “ACA” (Affordable Care Act, 2010) Medicaid would be eligible to cover million more”, study by the Harvard School of Public Health researchers.The researchers concluded that overall, Medicaid expansions are linked with 6.1 percent decline in deaths.

Under the Affordable Care Act of 2010, states were required to expand their Medicaid programs, to cover additional 17 million recipients nationally. Last month’s Supreme Court ruling on the health care law, however, effectively granted states a pass on this expansion. The U.S. Supreme Court decided to make the Medicaid expansion optional. States can either accept or reject the expansion.

The Medicaid expansion, which is to take effect in 2014, is part of the federal health-reform law and the federal government has promised to pay for the entire expansion for the first three years, starting in 2014, and then decreasing the support to 90 percent over eight years, said Hatch,D-Des Moines, senator of the state Lowa.

Being paid for the expansion cost by the federal government States should raise concern about the failure to expand Medicaid to aid the people who are most at risk of not getting the care they actually need, or else it would be “financially irresponsible” to reject expansion of Medicaid. 

Medicaid Expansion