Medicaid expansion was associated with a smaller increase in the rates of cardiovascular mortality than in places that did not expand Medicaid, a new analysis suggests.
The authors, publishing in JAMA Cardiology, looked whether the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was responsible for the largest gains in health insurance coverage for nonelderly adults in the U.S., was associated with any decrease in cardiovascular mortality. The longitudinal, observational, difference-in-difference study included county-level data from 48 states on adults aged 45 to 64 from 2010 to 2016. The research team looked specifically at annual, age-adjusted cardiovascular mortality rates from prior to the Medicaid expansion and after the expansion. A total of 29 states had expanded Medicaid eligibility and 19 did not (2 states were excluded from the study).
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