{"id":2096,"date":"2020-01-26T16:51:54","date_gmt":"2020-01-26T16:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=2096"},"modified":"2020-01-26T16:51:54","modified_gmt":"2020-01-26T16:51:54","slug":"study-links-medicaid-expansion-to-6-percent-reduction-in-opioid-overdose-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=2096","title":{"rendered":"Study links Medicaid expansion to 6 percent reduction in opioid overdose deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“Obamacare\u2019s Medicaid expansion, which gave millions of low-income adults access to health insurance, was linked to a 6 percent reduction in opioid overdose death rates \u2014 potentially preventing thousands of deaths \u2014 according to a new study<\/a> in JAMA Network Open<\/em>.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study looked at what happened in counties in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act by 2017, compared to counties in states that didn\u2019t expand Medicaid, accounting for variables like demographic and policy differences. The Medicaid expansion was made optional in a 2012 Supreme Court ruling<\/a>, and only 32 states and Washington, DC, had opted to expand by the study period (with the total rising to 37<\/a> in the past few years).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study helps put to rest claims<\/a> by some Republican lawmakers, particularly Sen. Ron Johnson (WI), that the Medicaid expansion made the opioid crisis worse by expanding access to painkillers. The new study, echoing others before it<\/a>, suggests the Medicaid expansion had the opposite effect, and that there wasn\u2019t a link between the expansion and more deaths caused by painkillers, with the possible \u2014 and relatively uncommon \u2014 exception of methadone used in pain treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers found that Medicaid expansion counties had a 6 percent lower rate in opioid overdose deaths than non-expansion counties. That was mostly due to an 11 percent lower rate of deaths involving heroin and a 10 percent lower rate for deaths linked to synthetic opioids excluding methadone”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/2020\/1\/10\/21058699\/medicaid-expansion-opioid-epidemic-drug-overdoses-obamacare-aca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Obamacare\u2019s Medicaid expansion, which gave millions of low-income adults access to health insurance, was linked to a 6 percent reduction in opioid overdose death rates \u2014 potentially preventing thousands of deaths \u2014 according to a new study in JAMA Network Open.<\/p>\n

The study looked at what happened in counties in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act by 2017, compared to counties in states that didn\u2019t expand Medicaid, accounting for variables like demographic and policy differences. The Medicaid expansion was made optional in a 2012 Supreme Court ruling, and only 32 states and Washington, DC, had opted to expand by the study period (with the total rising to 37 in the past few years).<\/p>\n

The study helps put to rest claims by some Republican lawmakers, particularly Sen. Ron Johnson (WI), that the Medicaid expansion made the opioid crisis worse by expanding access to painkillers. The new study, echoing others before it, suggests the Medicaid expansion had the opposite effect, and that there wasn\u2019t a link between the expansion and more deaths caused by painkillers, with the possible \u2014 and relatively uncommon \u2014 exception of methadone used in pain treatment.<\/p>\n

The researchers found that Medicaid expansion counties had a 6 percent lower rate in opioid overdose deaths than non-expansion counties. That was mostly due to an 11 percent lower rate of deaths involving heroin and a 10 percent lower rate for deaths linked to synthetic opioids excluding methadone”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[346,53,344,341,342,343,345,209],"class_list":["post-2096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-death-rates","tag-deaths","tag-decrease","tag-medicaid","tag-opioid","tag-overdose","tag-saving-lives","tag-study"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2097,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096\/revisions\/2097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}