The effect of the affordable care act Medicaid expansions on financial wellbeing

Luojia Hu, Robert Kaestner, Bhashkar Mazumder, Sarah Miller and Ashley Wong

Journal of Public Economics, 2018, vol. 163, issue C, 99-112

Abstract: We examine the effect of the Medicaid expansions under the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) on consumer financial outcomes using data from a major credit reporting agency for a large, national sample of adults. We employ the synthetic control method to compare individuals living in states that expanded Medicaid to those that did not. We find that the Medicaid expansions significantly reduced the number of unpaid bills and the amount of debt sent to third-party collection agencies among those residing in zip codes with the highest share of low-income, uninsured individuals. Our estimates imply a reduction in collection balances of approximately $1140 among those who gain Medicaid coverage due to the ACA. Our findings suggest that the ACA Medicaid expansions had important financial impacts beyond increasing health care use.

Keywords: Health insurance; Consumer finance; Public policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H42 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (59)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272718300707
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:163:y:2018:i:c:p:99-112

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.04.009

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().