Study Showing Medicaid’s Anti-Poverty Effect Cited in “Forbes”

August 8, 2019 @ 11:06 pm
By Communications Office

Research scientists Naomi Zewde and Christopher Wimer found that Medicaid expansions under Obamacare lifted nearly 700,000 out of poverty.

Medicaid is typically considered a healthcare program, providing insurance coverage to some 65 million low-income Americans. But in a recent article for Forbes, Duke University physician and behavioral scientist Peter Ubel cites research by Naomi Zewde and Christopher Wimer, both of the School’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy, to argue that Medicaid can, and should, be considered as an antipoverty program as well.

READ: “Antipoverty Impact Of Medicaid Growing With State Expansions Over Time,” in Health Affairs (1.7.19).

READ: “Medicaid: It’s an Antipoverty Program, Stupid!” by Peter Ubel, 30 July 2019 Forbes.

Ubel stresses Zewde and Wimer’s finding that Medicaid expansions implemented under the 2010 Affordable Care Act (also known as “Obamacare”) have resulted in a 1 percent reduction in poverty, pulling nearly 700,000 people out of poverty by relieving them of the costs of necessary healthcare.

He further notes that besides lifting people out of poverty, the Medicaid program can keep participants from falling below the poverty line in the first place.

“People who would otherwise be bankrupt or financially crippled by the price of their emergency appendectomy,” Ubel writes, “are relieved of that expense when they’re part of the program.”