The Takeaway: Expanding Medicaid Programs Saves Lives, Say Harvard Profs

A study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine says that when states expanded their Medicaid programs, fewer people died. Medicaid is the government-run health insurance program for the poor and disabled (not to be confused with Medicare, which is for older adults only).

It may seem common sense that giving low-income Americans more access to affordable health care results in them having better health (and subsequently lower death rates). But critics of Medicaid expansion contend the program does not improve the health of beneficiaries and may even be linked to worse health -- all while costing state governments bunches of money.

In this study, Harvard researchers analyzed data from three states--New York, Maine and Arizona--that had expanded Medicaid in the last decade to cover low-income adults without children or disabilities. In these states, deaths among adults 20-64 decreased by about 1,500 combined per year, after adjusting for population growth. In four neighboring states that did not expand coverage, death rates increased during the same time period.

The researchers concluded that overall, Medicaid expansions were associated with a 6.1 percent decline in deaths.

This study "should raise concern about the failure to expand Medicaid coverage to people most at risk of not getting the care that they need," said Karen Davis, president of the nonpartisan research foundation Commonwealth Fund.

Under the Affordable Care Act of 2010, states were originally required to expand their Medicaid programs, to the tune of an 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.

Thursday Quick Hits: 

• More older adults treated for depression (and that's a good thing). For many years, depression in seniors was underdiagnosed and undertreated because it didn't always manifest the same way as it does in younger patients. But times have changed, in part due to increased education about the issue for primary care doctors, and Medicare now covers a free depression screening for new beneficiaries. Still, some doctors say we may treat it more "but we don't treat it very well yet."

• Twice as many older women live in poverty. A new study found that American women 65 and older were twice as likely to be living below the poverty level as their male counterparts. They also rely on Social Security at higher rates.

• Boomers average 11.3 jobs in a lifetime. There's lots of chatter about how Gen X and Y workers jump from job to job much more frequently that previous generations did. But new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that people born between 1957 and 1964 have had an average of 11.3 jobs in their lifetime. And between the ages of 18 and 24, boomers held an average of 5.5 jobs--slightly more than those born in the 1980s did between those ages.

Photo: Joey Ivansco/AP