What is Medicaid’s Impact on Access to Care, Health Outcomes, and Quality of Care? Setting the Record Straight on the Evidence – Issue Brief | The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

Finding #1:  Having Medicaid is much better than being uninsured.

Consistently, research indicates that people with Medicaid coverage fare much better than their uninsured counterparts on diverse measures of access to care, utilization, and unmet need. A large body of evidence shows that, compared to low-income uninsured children, children enrolled in Medicaid are significantly more likely to have a usual source of care (USOC) and to receive well-child care, and significantly less likely to have unmet or delayed needs for medical care, dental care, and prescription drugs due to costs.^{3 4 5 6}
The research findings on adults generally mirror the patterns for children. A synthesis of the literature on the impact of Medicaid expansions for pregnant women concluded, “…the weight of evidence is that expansions led to modest improvements in prenatal care use, in terms of either earlier prenatal care or more adequate prenatal care, at least in some states and for some groups affected by the expansions.”⁷ Mothers covered by Medicaid are much more likely than low-income uninsured mothers to have a USOC, a doctor visit, and a dental visit, and to receive cancer screening services.⁸ Nonelderly adults covered by Medicaid are more likely than uninsured adults to report health care visits overall and visits for specific types of services; they are also more likely to report timely care and less likely to delay or go without needed medical care because of costs.⁹ Projections from a recent analysis show that, if Medicaid beneficiaries were instead uninsured, they would be significantly less likely to have a USOC and much more likely to have unmet health care needs; except for emergency department care, their use of key types of services would also drop significantly. At the same time, their out-of-pocket spending would increase dramatically – almost four-fold on average.¹⁰ Other research provides evidence of increased access to care and health care utilization for previously uninsured low-income adults who gain Medicaid coverage under state expansions of eligibility.¹¹

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What is Medicaid’s Impact on Access to Care, Health Outcomes, and Quality of Care? Setting the Record Straight on the Evidence – Issue Brief | The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

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