Helen Levy co-authors Detroit News op-ed on Medicaid expansion in Michigan

As lawmakers develop Michigan's budget for 2013, they would do well to consider expanding Medicaid coverage to those at or below 138 percent of poverty as called for by the Affordable Care Act, opine Ford School's Helen Levy and Thomas Buchmueller in the Detroit News.

Levy, a research associate professor at the Ford School and the Institute for Social Research, conducted an analysis for the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation with Buchmueller, Waldo O. Hildebrand Professor of Risk Management and Insurance in the Stephen M. Ross School of Business and found that expanding the Medicaid system could save Michigan nearly a billion dollars between 2014 and 2023. They argue that an expansion could also infuse the state economy with more than $30 billion dollars in funding—a hard bargain to ignore after a long and deep recession.

Such expansion of the Medicaid system offers other benefits, too, Levy and Buchmueller argue, including protecting Michigan employers from financial penalties if their employees do not have access to affordable health care by 2014.