JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – A number of states found ways to expand Medicaid without increasing
their administrative spending, according to the results of a 10-year study published
last month in the journal Health Affairs.
Dr. Casey P. Balio of East Tennessee State University is the lead author of the study, which was selected for the November issue of Health Affairs that focuses on “Hospitals, ACA Marketplace & More.” Balio is a research assistant professor at the Center for Rural Health Research and the Department of Health Services Management and Policy in the ETSU College of Public Health.
At the time the article was written, Balio was a doctoral candidate at the Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health in Indianapolis. Her co-authors are Fairbanks School of Public Health faculty members Drs. Justin Blackburn, associate professor; Dr. Valerie A. Yeager, associate professor; and Dr. Nir Menachemi, Fairbanks Endowed Chair, professor, and head of the Department of Health Policy and Management, along with Dr. Kosali I. Simon, the Herman B. Wells Endowed Professor in Indiana University’s Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs and associate vice provost for health sciences.
The team studied data from all 50 states for the period of 2007-17, which encompassed the years both before and after the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and the main expansions in 2014. The study, which was part of Balio’s dissertation work, considered the effects of the optional Medicaid expansions that occurred after the ACA on state Medicaid administrative spending.
“We found that, on average, states were able to expand without increasing per-enrollee or the percent of total spending that is administrative,” Balio said. “However, we did find differences by the potential size of expansion where those with larger potential expansions saw some significant reductions in these measures of administrative spending.
“We hope that findings from this study provide context to policymakers and states who are considering expansions of their Medicaid programs in this way or others.”
Balio’s research focuses on Medicaid, governmental public health systems, and econometrics. She earned her B.A. in biology and evolutionary biology in 2014 at Case Western Reserve University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research before joining the ETSU faculty this fall.
To read the article, visit bit.ly/3bE6e3T. Health Affairs, the leading journal of health policy thought and research, has been published since 1981 by Project HOPE, a global health and humanitarian relief organization that places power in the hands of local health care workers to save lives across the globe.