COVID-19 and Medicaid Expansion: Health and Economic Effects in Four Southern States

Since 2013, Harvard University's Benjamin Sommers and his research team have surveyed low-income adults in southern states to understand the effects of federal and state policies on their health insurance coverage, access to care, and health status. For example, the team’s survey of low-income adults in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Texas during and in the year following Arkansas’s implementation of Medicaid work requirements provided the first estimates on the effects of this experiment. Over the next year, Sommers will follow up on this work to focus on the health and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in these four states. Given that three of them have expanded their Medicaid programs and one (Texas) has not, he also will examine how Medicaid expansion has affected states’ COVID-19 responses and impacts. With the lag in federal surveys, private data collection such as this is essential for enabling federal and state governments to chart a path forward for their health systems and economies.