One of the nation's costliest and most serious chronic diseases is getting
diagnosed and treated better among poor Americans because of Obamacare and the Medicaid expansion included in it, a new study concludes. At least in the states that took the expansion.
The number of new diabetes cases identified among poor Americans has surged in states that have embraced the Affordable Care Act, but not in those that have not, a new study has found, suggesting that the health care law may be helping thousands of people get earlier treatment for one of this country’s costliest medical conditions. […]
In the new study by Quest Diagnostics, a medical testing company, researchers analyzed laboratory test results from all 50 states in the company's large database over two six-month periods. In the states that expanded Medicaid, the number of Medicaid enrollees with newly identified diabetes rose by 23 percent, to 18,020 in the first six months of 2014, from 14,625 in the same period in 2013. The diagnoses rose by only 0.4 percent—to 11,653 from 11,612—in the states that did not expand Medicaid.
In all, the Quest study identified 434,288 people as having diabetes—equal to about a quarter of all new American cases in a year, according to the most recent federal data. […]
The authors of the study, published Monday in the journal Diabetes Care, said it was a natural experiment: About half the states had chosen to expand Medicaid by early 2014 and half had not. The research team used what medical experts agreed was a reasonable proxy for a diabetes diagnosis—the results of a test, called hemoglobin A1c, that reflects long-term glucose in the blood.
The stark difference in the numbers—a 23 percent hike in expansion states, versus 0.4 percent in the others—is convincing enough for most physicians and public health experts to be convinced the expansion has made the difference. That includes Dr. David M. Nathan, director of the Diabetes Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, who says this "suggests that states that are accepting this kind of coverage are doing their populations a huge favor." That's because early detection—and effective treatment—of the disease can help prevent some of the worst outcomes of it, including heart attacks, blindness, kidney failure and leg and foot amputations.
That's saving lives, and for the states, money.