No, Expanding Medicaid Won’t Help the Drug Crisis
- BY FGA
Medicaid expansion is an endless supplier of broken promises, including hospital closures, enrollment numbers, jobs, and more.
But one of the more depressing broken promises is the idea that expanding Medicaid would somehow help America fight its drug crisis. The Biden administration went so far as to say that states that haven’t expanded Medicaid aren’t providing adequate treatment for their citizens.
Let’s set the record straight: Expansion has made the drug crisis worse.
In a new paper for the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), Senior Research Fellow Michael Greibrok and Policy Director Sam Adolphsen outline the heartbreaking realities of government encouraging dependency:
- 14 of the 15 states with the highest overdose rate are Medicaid expansion states.
- Half of the states with the lowest overdose rate have not expanded Medicaid and another two had only expanded during the data year.
- The 10 states with the highest Medicaid usage more than doubled their overdose rate from 2014 to 2020 and this rate was more than twice that of the 10 states with the lowest Medicaid usage.
- Mothers enrolled in Medicaid gave birth to babies with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) at a higher rate than mothers with any other coverage, including those who were uninsured.
For more on these key findings, click here to read the research paper.
Expanding Medicaid isn’t going to address overdoses or children born with NAS. It’s a false promise—like every other promise made by advocates—to dupe the holdout states into letting their guard down. Holdout states are wise to continue to stand strong against pressure to expand.
In The News:
Greibrok and Adolphsen’s paper was featured in an exclusive by the Daily Caller: Medicaid Expansions Meant To Stop The Opioid Crisis ‘May Be Making It Worse,’ New Report Finds
It was also featured in The New American, The Maine Wire, The Minnesota Sun, The Michigan Star, The Ohio Star, and The Tennessee Star.
