States that expanded Medicaid coverage saw a steeper decline in cancer mortality rate, compared to those that didn’t follow the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, according to study results presented during a press cast in advance of the 2020 ASCO Annual Meeting.
“This is the first study to show the benefit of Medicaid expansion on cancer death rates on a national scale,” said Anna Lee, MD, MPH, the study’s lead author and a radiation oncology fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. “We now have evidence that Medicaid expansion has saved the lives of many people with cancer across the United States.”
In the period from 1999-2017, the researchers found that mortality rates declined from baseline by 29% in states that expanded Medicaid versus 25% in those that did not.
The researchers gathered data from the National Center for Health Statistics,…
