HHS Study: Medicaid Expansion Could Lead To Lower Premiums For Everyone
Department of Health and Human Services researchers compared counties across state borders and adjusted for several differences between them. Their calculations led them to conclude that expanding Medicaid helped produce to marketplace premiums that were 7 percent lower.
The New York Times:
How Expanding Medicaid Can Lower Insurance Premiums For All
The Obama administration for years has been pleading with states to expand their Medicaid programs and offer health coverage to low-income people. Now it has a further argument in its favor: Expansion of Medicaid could lower insurance prices for everyone else. A new study published by in-house researchers at the Department of Health and Human Services compared places that have expanded their Medicaid programs as part of Obamacare with neighboring places that have not. They found that, in 2015, insurance in the marketplace for middle-income people cost less in the places that had expanded Medicaid. (Sanger-Katz, 8/25)
CNBC:
Expand Medicaid And Obamacare Will Cost Less, Federal Government Says
States that allow nearly all poor adults to enroll in their Medicaid health coverage programs saw prices on Obamacare private insurance marketplaces about 7 percent lower than states that haven't expanded Medicaid eligibility, the federal government said Thursday. The findings reflect the fact that poorer people tend to be less healthy than people with higher incomes, who make up the lion's share of Obamacare enrollees in expansion states. (Mangan, 8/25)