Date of Creation
5-1-2019
Degree Type
Departmental Honors Thesis - Restricted Access
First Advisor
Professor Melissa Boyle
Abstract
The opioid epidemic has reached the level of a national emergency. In the past, Medicare and Medicaid public health insurance expansions have been shown to impact drug overdoses both positively and negatively. In 2010, the Obama Administration passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which included a provision to expand state Medicaid programs to include low-income childless adults in 2014. The ACA mandated that substance use disorder treatment had to be covered by Medicaid. The ACA Medicaid expansion could reduce the rate of drug overdoses if treatment for substance use disorders is effective and used. There is also the potential that it increases the rate of drug overdoses by providing people with easier access to prescription medications. Because only certain states implemented the ACA Medicaid expansion, this paper relies on a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences design to study the impact of the Medicaid expansion on the rate of drug and opioid overdoses. Based on the difference-in-differences methodology employed here, the ACA Medicaid expansion increases the rate of opioid overdoses by 21.61% and increases the rate of drug overdoses by 17.47%.
Recommended Citation
Carlone, Emma, "The Effects of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansion on the Opioid Epidemic" (2019). Economics and Accounting Honors Theses. 22.
https://crossworks.holycross.edu/econ_honor/22