Healthy Michigan provides access to health care services… and promotes healthier lives

By Dennis Archambault

If you provide access to health care services, people will come. They may need some encouragement, a conveniently located medical home, and some help with transportation. But they will come. And for those who require specialty medical and surgical services, they will get care. They will thrive and ultimately, they will live healthier lives.

Proponents of the Affordable Care Act knew that. Now there is evidence that expanded Medicaid, known as Healthy Michigan, works.

The University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation published a study last month measuring the correlation between Medicaid coverage and mortality (https://www.nber.org/papers/w26081?utm_campaign=ntwh&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ntwg10). There is “robust evidence” that Medicaid increases use of health care services, including prescription drugs and prevention, according to Sarah Miller, Ph.D., one of the authors of the study. “Given this, it may seem obvious that Medicaid would improve objective measures of health.”

The next step is to show how expanding access to care not only enhances life, but also helps manage the cost of care by promoting a greater orientation to primary care and prevention, even secondary prevention, when it comes to managing chronic disease. Let’s hope the ACA can stay in effect long enough to produce the data to prove this point.

Dennis Archambault is vice president of Public Affairs for Authority Health.