Medicaid Cuts Could Lead to More Than 16,500 Medically Preventable Deaths, Study Shows
Proposed Medicaid cuts by the House Budget Committee could result in 7.6 million more uninsured Americans and more than 16,000 preventable deaths annually, according to a new analysis published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The Medicaid cuts proposed in May by the House of Representatives’ Budget Committee would increase the number of uninsured persons in the United States by 7.6 million and lead to approximately 16,642 medically preventable deaths annually, according to a mid-range estimate published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
A team of researchers, including corresponding author Adam Gaffney, M.D., M.P.H., pulmonary and critical care medicine specialist at the Cambridge Health Alliance and assistant professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, summarized the six largest Medicaid policy changes that the Budget Committee estimates would reduce federal Medicaid expenditures by at least $100 billion over 10 years.
Gaffney and his team then used House Budget Committee figures, Congressional Budget Office analyses and studies of previous Medicaid expansions to predict the effects of each change, including loss of coverage and mortality.
Mortality specifically was calculated using four quasi-experimental studies, including a study of the ACA Medicaid expansion that linked survey data to death records. Non-mortal impacts were calculated using data from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment (OHIE).
“Policy makers should weigh the likely health and financial harms to patients and providers of reducing Medicaid expenditures against the desirability of tax reductions, which would accrue mostly to wealthy Americans,” Gaffney and his team write.
Medicaid currently covers 71 million Americans.
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