Medicaid Expansions

In 2008, Oregon initiated a limited expansion of its Medicaid program for low-income adults through a lottery drawing of approximately 30,000 names from a waiting list of almost 90,000 persons. Selected adults won the opportunity to apply for Medicaid and to enroll if they met eligibility requirements. The researchers used the random assignment embedded in the Oregon Medicaid lottery to examine the effects of insurance coverage on health care use and health outcomes after approximately 2 years. They found that insurance led to increased access to and utilization of health care, substantial improvements in mental health, and reductions in financial strain.

This bill constitutes the last step in the O’Malley-Brown Administration’s three-year effort to use the tools of the Affordable Care Act to enhance Marylanders’ access to quality and affordable health care. The bill puts in place the remaining policies necessary for the State’s health benefit exchange to begin operations and expands Medicaid eligibility to ensure coverage for the State’s most financially vulnerable. 

This report provides updated estimates in light of Arkansas's recently proposed option for covering low-income adults through private health plans in the state insurance exchange. These estimates find that the private option can be fully funded with existing resources at the state level and would add less than 15% to federal health-care costs in Arkansas. In some realistic scenarios, there could be no additional federal costs at all.

This report analyzes the enrollment and costs implications of Medicaid expansion in Kansas. With Kansas’s current Medicaid eligibility threshold being among the lowest in the nation, the Kansas Health Institute estimates Medicaid expansion would result in more than 240,000 individuals enrolling in Medicaid, and the cost to Kansas from 2014-2020 would be close to $519 million.

The Wyoming Department of Health released this report analyzing the costs of full Medicaid expansion, as prescribed by the ACA. It estimates that expanding Medicaid in Wyoming would insure an additional 28,200 individuals and it would save the state $47 million over six years.