States that adopted Medicaid expansion following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) had a greater decrease in cancer mortality rates compared with states that did not, a new analysis shows.
Overall, cancer mortality declined by 29% in states that expanded Medicaid and by 25% in those that did not.
This translates to an estimated 785 fewer cancer deaths in 2017 in the states that expanded Medicaid, said lead author Anna Lee, MD, MPH, a radiation oncology fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. "We estimate that an additional 589 cancer deaths could have been prevented if non-expanded states had expanded Medicaid."
This is the first study to show a directly measured cancer survival benefit from Medicaid expansion under the ACA, she commented.
The greatest mortality benefit was observed in Hispanic patients. "There was significant baseline variability in survival in Hispanic patients, which may reflect known poor access to healthcare in this population," she said.
Lee presented her findings in a virtual session for journalists held in advance of the virtual scientific program of the 2020 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.
"This study is important because it's looking at national data," commented Ernest Hawk, MD, MPH, vice president and division head for Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
