Researchers Study Michigan Medicaid Expansion
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
A team from the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation will evaluate the efficacy of Michigan’s Medicaid health insurance option.
The Healthy Michigan Plan, a new Medicaid health insurance option, was launched by Michigan in April, and has signed up 477,000 individuals to date, and now researchers from the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation want to find out how well the program is doing. According to a press release, the Institute will evaluate the plan through a five-year contract with the Michigan Department of Community health, and the study will analyze many aspects of the program.
Healthy Michigan was designed to improve access to high-quality healthcare and to encourage healthy behaviors among low-income residents of Michigan, as well as to reduce the uninsured and the rate of uncompensated care in the state. Over the next five years, the study will examine how well the program is meeting its intended goals, and how enrollees are interacting with it, examining extensive data regarding enrollment patterns, health spending, health-related behaviors, and health outcomes.
IHPI director Dr. John Ayanian will lead the project. He explained in the release, “The way Michigan chose to expand Medicaid has many distinctive features that deserve careful study, as they may hold important lessons for Michigan and other states. We look forward to applying the knowledge and talent of our faculty to evaluate the plan and giving our lawmakers the information they will need to shape future decisions.”
The program saw a remarkably strong launch, experiencing more signups in its first 100 days than were expected to sign up during the initial year, revealing a strong demand for new insurance options for low-income people. Ayanian and colleagues recently published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about the first 100 days of enrollment.
As researcher Dr. Susan Dorr Goold explained in the release, “Michigan, like all states, faces budget constraints, and Medicaid is a substantial portion of the state's budget. We want to know from people in Michigan – especially those most affected by Medicaid policy decisions – given limited resources, what do they think Medicaid should prioritize?”
The Healthy Michigan Plan is open to any resident of the state between the ages of 18 and 64 with a household income less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level (about $16,000 per year for a single adult) who is not eligible for another insurance plan.