Medicaid reimbursement rates for primary care services and behavioral health outcomes
研究医疗补助初级保健报销率提高对非老年成人参保者心理疾病和药物滥用障碍的减少效果，发现存在正向溢出效应。
We study the effects of changing Medicaid reimbursement rates for primary care services on behavioral health outcomes-defined here as mental illness and substance use disorders. Medicaid enrollees are at elevated risk for these, and other, chronic conditions and are likely to have unmet treatment needs. We apply two-way fixed-effects regressions to survey data specifically designed to measure behavioral health outcomes over the period 2010-2016. We find that higher primary care reimbursement rates reduce mental illness and substance use disorders among non-elderly adult Medicaid enrollees, although we interpret findings for substance use disorders with some caution as they may be vulnerable to differential pre-trends. Overall, our findings suggest positive spillovers from a policy designed to target primary care services to behavioral health outcomes.