Obamacare led to better cancer outcomes: studies

[Honeycombe8]

8. It was mainly the Medicaid Expansion by some states. Here's CNN article on it.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/02/health/medicaid-expansion-cancer-racial-disparities-study/index.html

"Regardless of race, Medicaid expansion trended toward an increase in timely treatment overall," the researchers wrote.

The researchers took a close look at whether cancer patient's treatment was "timely," defined as whether treatment began within 30 days of the diagnosis. The researchers also assessed that data by race and whether the patient's state of residence had expanded Medicaid as of the time of their diagnosis.

The researchers found that before expansion, black patients were 4.9 percentage points less likely to receive timely treatment, but "prior racial disparities were no longer observed after Medicaid," the researchers wrote in their study's abstract.
Expansion "was associated with a differential benefit" of 6.9 percentage points for black patients and 1.8% percentage points for white patients, the researchers found.

For instance, a study that published last year in the American Journal of Public Health found that declines in infant death rates between 2010 and 2016 were greater in Medicaid expansion states, with greater declines among black infants, compared with states that did not expand Medicaid.

"There's growing concern about Massachusetts versus Mississippi differences. State-by-state disparities are now the big problem," Brawley said, because some states expanded Medicaid and others did not.