State Health Policy

Medicaid has been under pressure for decades to show that it improves health outcomes, and this scrutiny has only increased with the current Medicaid expansion debate. In an early view opinion, new contributing writer Heidi Allen of Columbia University’s School of Social Work explains that Medicaid also faces problems related to stigma, and the fact it is funded by state tax dollars pits it against other policy sectors like education. More

This study finds that legislators’ opinions about the impact of parity laws on access to care, and the effectiveness of behavioral health treatment, have greater influence on support for the laws than political party affiliation or state-level contextual factors such as unemployment rates. More