{"663843":{"#nid":"663843","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Family Financial Well-Being Rose After Medicaid Expansions, Research Shows ","body":[{"value":"\u003Cdiv\u003E\r\n\u003Cp\u003ELow-income parents who switched to Medicaid under Affordable Care Act expansions often reaped benefits that appeared to help their financial and home lives, according to a pair of recent studies co-authored by Lindsey Rose Bullinger of the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/spp.gatech.edu\/\u0022 rel=\u0022noreferrer noopener\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003ESchool of Public Policy\u003C\/a\u003E.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\u003C\/div\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThe parents often saw lower out-of-pocket expenses for medical care and appeared to gain the flexibility to take new jobs that provided more opportunities to tend to their children\u0026rsquo;s educational needs, according to the study.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\u003C\/div\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;The cost of private health insurance for some low-income families can be prohibitive or burdensome. These studies show that if some of that burden is relieved, the lives of those families can be dramatically improved across a variety of dimensions,\u0026rdquo; \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/iac.gatech.edu\/people\/person\/bullinger-lindsey\u0022 rel=\u0022noreferrer noopener\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003EBullinger\u003C\/a\u003E said.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\u003C\/div\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\r\n\u003Cp\u003EOne \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/epub\/10.1177\/00469580221133215\u0022 rel=\u0022noreferrer noopener\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003Estudy\u003C\/a\u003E was published recently in INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing. In it, Bullinger and her colleagues examined data from the 2016-2020 National Survey on Children\u0026rsquo;s Health. They found that public health insurance coverage for children rose 5.5 percentage points and private insurance enrollment fell by a similar amount in states that expanded Medicaid after 2015 as compared to those states who did not choose to broaden the eligibility pool for the government-funded insurance program for low-income people.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\u003C\/div\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThat finding suggests many parents dropped their children\u0026rsquo;s more expensive private insurance for more affordable public insurance once the adults in the family became eligible for Medicaid. The data also show a marked reduction in out-of-pocket expenses for child medical care, suggesting that many families who opted for Medicaid included children with significant medical issues requiring costly treatment.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\u003C\/div\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThat tracks with another finding, that many of the parents who enrolled their families in Medicaid also switched jobs after enrolling. One possibility: Parents no longer felt tied to a less flexible job because of the insurance coverage it offered and jumped to something more flexible to help them better care for their children.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\u003C\/div\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThe other \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/soej.12614\u0022 rel=\u0022noreferrer noopener\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003Estudy\u003C\/a\u003E, published in the Southern Economic Journal, found that children\u0026rsquo;s reading test scores improved by about 2% among children of expansion-state residents who switched to Medicaid. This suggests that the improved financial well-being provided by Medicaid enrollment made it easier for parents to spend more time reading to their children, helping with homework, or eating dinner together.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\u003C\/div\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThe study found no discernible improvement in math scores or measures of socioemotional skills, the authors note. Still, they say that \u0026ldquo;taken together, (the) results suggest that the improvements in children\u0026rsquo;s reading scores may have been due to improvements in families\u0026rsquo; functioning.\u0026rdquo;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\u003C\/div\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\r\n\u003Cp\u003EIn another \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.ehb.2021.101098\u0022 rel=\u0022noreferrer noopener\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003Estudy\u003C\/a\u003E published in 2021 in Economics and Human Biology, Bullinger, Gopalan, and Lombardi found that parents reported significantly better health after Medicaid expansion.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\u003C\/div\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\r\n\u003Cp\u003EBullinger co-authored the paper in INQUIRY, titled \u0026ldquo;Better Late Than Never: Effects of Late ACA Medicaid Expansions for Parents on Family Health-Related Financial Well-Being,\u0026rdquo; with Caitlin McPherrann Lombardi of the University of Connecticut and Maithreyi Gopalan of the University of Pennsylvania. It is available at https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/00469580221133215\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\u003C\/div\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\r\n\u003Cp\u003EShe co-wrote the article in Southern Economic Journal, \u0026ldquo;Impacts of Publicly Funded Health Insurance for Adults on Children\u0026rsquo;s Academic Achievement,\u0026rdquo; with the same co-authors.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\u003C\/div\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cdiv\u003E\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThe School of Public Policy is a unit of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\u003C\/div\u003E\r\n","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EThe studies are the latest in a line of work examining the impact of Medicaid expansions on child and family health.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"The studies are the latest in a line of work examining the impact of Medicaid expansions on child and family health."}],"uid":"34600","created_gmt":"2022-12-13 21:03:50","changed_gmt":"2022-12-13 21:03:50","author":"mpearson34","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2022-12-13T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2022-12-13T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"663841":{"id":"663841","type":"image","title":"Signing up for Medicaid helped parents financially, but children\u0027s reading scores also improved","body":null,"created":"1670965234","gmt_created":"2022-12-13 21:00:34","changed":"1670965234","gmt_changed":"2022-12-13 21:00:34","alt":"","file":{"fid":"251284","name":"bullinger study image.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/bullinger%20study%20image.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/bullinger%20study%20image.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":287599,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/bullinger%20study%20image.jpg?itok=3X-dDTVK"}}},"media_ids":["663841"],"groups":[{"id":"1281","name":"Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts"},{"id":"1289","name":"School of Public Policy"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/michael.pearson@iac.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EMichael Pearson\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nIvan Allen College of Liberal Arts\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["michael.pearson@iac.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}