The impact of SSI-Medicaid autoenrollment policies on health insurance coverage

• In Event: Disability, Health Insurance, and Access to Care

Abstract

Nearly all people with disabilities have increased medical needs and face extra costs associated with their disabilities, and many also face significant barriers to work, meaning their ability to earn income and to access employer-sponsored health insurance is limited. Supplemental Security Income (SSI) provides a cash benefit to low-income people with disabilities and also has a stated goal of facilitating coordination with medical assistance programs. This study investigates the impact of automatic enrollment policies, in which enrollment in SSI automatically triggers enrollment in Medicaid. Prior work has found that that SSI-Medicaid automatic enrollment increases insurance coverage for children with disabilities and reduces caregiver burden for their families, but little is known about the impacts of SSI-Medicaid automatic enrollment among adults with disabilities. Using data from the American Community Survey, we take advantage of cross-state variation in SSI-Medicaid automatic enrollment policies and use several difference-in-differences designs to estimate the impact of automatic enrollment policies on Medicaid enrollment and overall insurance coverage for adult SSI recipients. We find meaningful and statistically significantly higher Medicaid coverage due to automatic enrollment policies, and heterogeneity in effect sizes depending on the likelihood of accessing health insurance outside of SSI pathways.

Authors

• Jessie Coe, RAND Corporation
  Presenting Author

• Stephanie Rennane, RAND Corporation
  Non-Presenting Co-Author