Full Citation

Title: Health insurance and opioid deaths: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act young adult provision

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2019

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI: 10.1002/hec.3872

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: The concurrence of health insurance expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and increasing opioid‐related mortality has led to debate whether insurance increases or decreases opioid deaths. I use the introduction of the ACA young adult (YA) provision as a quasi‐experiment and utilize the resulting policy‐induced variation across states over time in YA access to insurance to study the effect of coverage on opioid‐related mortality. I rely on the share of state populations which stood to gain insurance before the ACA to perform a dose–response analysis, and find that the YA provision reduced opioid‐related mortality. The analysis suggests that 1 percentage point more coverage reduced opioid mortality among YA by 2.5/100,000 or 19.8%.

Url: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/hec.3872

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Wettstein, Gal

Periodical (Full): Health Economics

Issue: 5

Volume: 28

Pages: 666-677

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Health, Other, Population Health and Health Systems

Countries: