In the 2 years since Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards signed that state’s Medicaid expansion bill into law, population health measures like access to coverage, early chronic disease detection, chronic disease treatment volumes, and preventative health procedure volumes have all seen positive gains, reported The Advocate‘s Elizabeth Crisp.

57,000 Louisianans are now receiving behavioral health services; over 20,000 have begun substance abuse treatment. Breast cancer and colon cancer detection rates have improved. Approximately 8,000 Medicaid recipients have had precancerous polyps removed.

Medicaid expansion also created 19,000 jobs in the state, according to a 2018 Louisiana State University study.

Those proactive gains, Louisiana’s health secretary Dr. Rebekah Gee told Crisp, are significant improvements, and will ultimately save the state money over its previous more expensive, poorer-outcome reactive healthcare paradigm.

“People don’t understand the driving force why people get on Medicaid. The more you walk in people’s shoes, the more you understand why people need Medicaid,” Gee said. “It’s difficult for people to make ends meet who are making even minimum wage.”

Cost critics disagree. They point out that healthcare currently accounts for approximately a third of Louisiana’s total annual budget.

But the majority of Louisiana’s healthcare expenditures are underwritten by federal funding, Gee rejoined, and the opportunity costs of population health measures like Medicaid expansion and preventative care are far outweighed by the cost of providing only post-diagnosis, catastrophic medical coverage to Louisianans.

“At the end of the day, we are talking about people getting health care,” Gee said. “This is not people taking money bags out of an office.”

Read more about it, in The Advocate.