Study: Medicaid Expansion Boosted Access To Opioid Addiction Treatment

The number of Medicaid-covered prescriptions for buprenorphine, a key drug used to treat opioid addiction, increased dramatically in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act while remaining relatively static in non-expansion states, according to a new study from researchers at the Urban Institute. Between 2011 and 2018, the number of buprenorphine prescriptions in the Medicaid program increased nearly fivefold, from 1.3 million to 6.2 million, the researchers found. The jump was largely the result of Medicaid expansion, with...