ACA Medicaid expansion impact on racial disparities in time to cancer treatment.

Rationale: A major dividing line in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was federally-funded expansion of state Medicaid programs. That’s because a lot of states felt they just couldn’t afford to stop dumping uninsured healthcare costs on struggling hospitals and communities. Given our political climate and the above title, we’re gonna go out on a limb and assume this study is gonna be positive. It will likely include a comparison of racial disparities in time to cancer treatment between states that either did or did not expand Medicaid under the ACA. Will there be secondary survival outcomes? Maybe, this is the plenary opener after all. One thing to point out here is that this data is coming from Flatiron Health, a tech company that uses its clinical application software to compile and analyze massive amounts of oncology data.
Betting Line: In states that expanded Medicaid, there were decreases both in disparities and in overall time to cancer treatment compared to states that didn’t expand, with some sophisticated formula touted to remedy to myriad demographic biases between states embracing versus dissing the ACA. | Adamson, ASCO Plenary 2019