Medicaid plays a key role for giving people with opioid-use disorder access to treatment, according to a Rutgers Health study. Progress in life-saving treatment for opioid-use disorder with the medication has stalled in the past several years, according to a Rutgers Health study. However, researchers added that while some states were able to achieve substantial improvement, others lost ground.
Specifically, states that have expanded access to Medicaid insurance coverage since 2018 saw increases in prescriptions for opioid-use disorder treatment, according to the study, while states that haven’t expanded Medicaid experienced declining treatment rates after 2022. Researchers found that state Medicaid policies were key drivers of population-level treatment rates.
The study, published in Health Affairs, examined trends in national retail pharmacy claims by Medicaid, Medicare and private insurance across states between 2018 and 2024, a period of rising fatal overdose rates and national policy changes aimed at increasing treatment. Researchers compared the claims with state populations and overdose rates to assess the impact of Medicaid eligibility on treatment uptake.
“We were impressed by the success stories in some states, such as those with recent eligibility expansions,” said Stephen Crystal, director of the Rutgers Center for Health Services Research at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research. “Several of these states, like Virginia, Utah and Missouri, doubled or tripled Medicaid-paid prescribing, driving strong population-level improvement. These successes point to opportunities for improvement even when the overall national rate of progress is disappointing. Nevertheless, wide disparities between states remained, as shown in maps and state comparison tables in the paper and its appendix.” To read the full story.