Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

The present study examines the effect of the Medicaid expansion of the Affordable Care Act on personal bankruptcy. The study combines data from court filings for personal bankruptcies from 2010 to 2015 with estimates of states' population from census data to generate rates of personal bankruptcies at the state level. The analysis consisted in using a comparative interrupted time series design, with states that did not expand Medicaid as the comparator group to States that expanded Medicaid. Results show that the Medicaid expansion was associated with a significant decrease of 1.33 points in personal bankruptcy rates. The results of this study have relevant policy implications as they suggest that health care insurance not only may provide enhanced access to health care as demonstrated in numerous studies, but also may protect from adverse financial outcomes.