FILE – A sign showing visitors to the hospital’s financial services department on Friday, Jan. 24, 2014. More than 500,000 of the poorest Americans would be left without health insurance under a mandatory work bill passed by House Republicans. In exchange for Medicaid medical insurance. However, the bill is unlikely to pass as Democrats strongly oppose it. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
(NewsNation) — Access to health insurance could reduce crime in the United States, four academics suggest in a recently published paper. working paper.
The study’s authors investigated one of the largest Medicaid disenrollments in U.S. history, which occurred in Tennessee in 2005. At that time, approximately 190,000 elderly and non-disabled adults without dependents lost their insurance.
Researchers found that losing Medicaid coverage can have indirect social costs.
Research shows that police data, in particular, shows that large numbers of insurance losses are driving up crime rates.
For the median county, crime increased by 16.6%, and violent and nonviolent crimes increased by 20.6% and 14.1%, respectively.
“Crime imposes costs on government budgets, crime victims, and society more generally,” the researchers wrote. “Recent policies introduced and proposed, contrary to the trend of history, are likely to result in many Americans losing their Medicaid and other insurance coverage. …Our findings show that these This suggests that policies may have unintended negative consequences for communities across the country.”
