Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

We implement the first US-wide health inclusive poverty measure (HIPM)—a measure that includes a need for health insurance in the poverty threshold and counts health insurance benefits as resources available to meet that need. We estimate the direct effects of public and private health benefits on health inclusive poverty, comparing the impacts of different health insurance programs to each other and to other means-tested and social insurance programs. Public and private health insurance benefits both reduce poverty substantially. Medicaid and ACA premium subsidies reduce poverty substantially, as much or more than other means-tested programs. We estimate the direct impact of Medicaid expansion on health inclusive poverty by removing Medicaid from the resources of beneficiaries of ACA Medicaid expansions and find a substantial effect. We will also estimate the effect of Medicaid expansion through propensity score methods.