Two economists at Lawrence-based The University of Kansas claim states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA may have seen a decrease in instances of "medical divorce," the act of separating assets after one partner in a couple is diagnosed with a degenerative disease like dementia, than states that didn't expand the program.
In their working paper, the economists compared medical divorce rates in 20 states that originally expanded Medicaid to 20 states that did not. They limited their analysis to couples aged 50 to 64 that likely had been married for longer periods of time, had substantial assets, were eligible for Medicaid under the expansion and who were at greater risk for developing a degenerative disease.
By comparing divorce rates from 2008 to 2011 — prior to the expansion — and from 2014 to 2015 after the expansion took effect, researchers found states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA saw a 5.6 percent decrease in medical divorces, compared to states that did not expand the program.
"This suggests that Medicaid [expansion] … significantly reduced the incidence of divorce, strongly suggesting that medical divorce was reduced in the first year of the ACA," the researchers David Slusky, assistant professor of economics, and Donna Ginther, professor of economics, concluded.