Raleigh – Yet another study proves that expanding Medicaid has improved lives, particularly in southern states that have expanded access as compared to neighboring states like North Carolina that have not. The study, published in Health Affairs “found that Medicaid expansion was associated with lower rates of self-reported health declines and a higher likelihood of maintaining baseline health status over time.”

An earlier report prepared by researchers at the George Washington University and released last year found that every single county in North Carolina would benefit from Medicaid expansion. Rural leaders and leaders of local health care systems continue to call on the General Assembly to expand Medicaid.

This study comes in the lead up to North Carolina’s legislative session when Medicaid expansion will remain a top priority for Democrats.

In 2018, several states expanded Medicaid including neighboring Virginia whose General Assembly passed the expansion after the 2017 wave election brought 15 new Democrats to the House of Delegates. Gubernatorial candidates in 2018 in Michigan, Kansas, and Maine all ran on Medicaid expansion and won.

This legislative session, Republicans will have their last opportunity before the 2020 elections to do the right thing. Not only the best thing for our state and economy, but the moral thing as well. Will they?

The Hill: Medicaid expansion improved health in Southern states: Study
By Peter Sullivan
January 7, 2020

Keys Points:

• A new study finds that Medicaid expansion improved people’s health in Southern states, resulting in fewer declines in people’s health.
• The study published in Health Affairs finds that Medicaid expansion made declines in health status 1.8 percentage points less likely in states that expanded the medical coverage.
• It examined 12 Southern states, including those that have accepted the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, like Kentucky, West Virginia, Arkansas and Louisiana, and those that have not, like Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
• “We found that Medicaid expansion was associated with lower rates of self-reported health declines and a higher likelihood of maintaining baseline health status over time,” the study finds.
• Resistance to Medicaid expansion has been declining, with multiple red states accepting the expansion in recent years, often through ballot initiatives that put the question to voters in the state.

• Southern U.S. states that expanded Medicaid “experienced lower rates of physical and mental health declines” than nearby regions that didn’t expand health benefits for poor Americans, a new analysis shows.
• A research team from Vanderbilt University Medical School and Harvard Medical School considered what they called an “ongoing debate over the merits of Medicaid expansion” that has focused partly on whether the existing safety net is good enough to provide access to healthcare for poor Americans. But the research uncovered that actual health coverage is better.
• “Medicaid expansion was associated with lower rates of self-reported health declines and a higher likelihood of maintaining baseline health status over time,” the 10-page analysis in the January 2020 journal Health Affairs by the Vanderbilt and Harvard researchers said.
• “Thus, nonexpanding southern states could improve the health of their low-income residents by accepting expansion funds or otherwise extending coverage to low-income residents.”
• “Study after study has shown the same thing—people in states with Medicaid expansion are better off,” said Jonathan Schleifer, executive director of The Fairness Project, which spent $6 million to support ballot measures that won in November of 2018. “Americans get it, and they’re tired of politicians valuing special interests over the lives of their own constituents. That’s why we’ve seen a revolt at the ballot box on this issue in even the deepest of red states.”