Medicaid expansion boosted addiction treatment

To get a sense of how the Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid affected opioid prescribing and addiction treatment, researchers in a new study compared pharmacy claims from three states that expanded Medicaid (California, Maryland, and Washington) and two that didn’t (Florida and Georgia). They found that in locations with expanded Medicaid, there were significantly more prescriptions of buprenorphine with naloxone (a treatment for opioid addiction) compared to non-expansion places. The expansion was not associated with an overall change in opioid painkiller prescriptions, though it was associated with more opioid prescriptions paid for by Medicaid specifically. The researchers used their findings to urge state Medicaid programs to track painkiller prescriptions, screen for addiction, and help people access addiction treatments. The research lands as some ACA critics assert that the Medicaid expansion exacerbated the opioid crisis — a claim disputedby many health policy experts.

August 17, 2018