Medicaid Expansion and the ACA: Early Impacts and Alternative Approaches
This session will present up-to-date evidence on the impacts of the Affordable Care Act's first two years of the Medicaid expansion. Since January 2014, 30 states have chosen to expand eligibility for Medicaid to low-income adults, while the remaining states have not done so, leaving several million adults without a coverage option under the ACA. Moreover, some states are pursuing alternative models of coverage expansion, focusing on the use of private insurance, higher cost-sharing, and other program features. The papers in this session assess the impacts of the first 1-2 years of the Medicaid expansion in several domains - the uninsured rate, health care utilization, self-reported health, and household finances - and also compare the preliminary effects of distinct state approaches to the expansion.