Medicaid Expansion and Buprenorphine Dispensing in Early vs Recent Expansion States.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion has been linked to improved uptake of medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) access for Medicaid enrollees, but evidence is limited on the associations of post-2018 expansions with population-level treatment. Moreover, prior studies have not implemented modern staggered-adoption estimators or examined outcomes by payer type, risking biased and incomplete inference.

Objectives

To evaluate the association of Medicaid expansion with buprenorphine treatment rates (overall and by payer) across all expansion states using updated data and methods and to test whether post-2018 expansions (post-X-waiver and telehealth era) differed from earlier ones.

Design, setting, and participants

Cross-secti

SUBMITTER: Siegal N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12917678 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature