Cancer Patients Face Better Odds In Medicaid Expansion States

Key TakeawaysCancer patients have better survival odds in Medicaid expansion statesBoth five-year and overall survival rates improved more in states that expanded Medicaid eligibility to more peopleInsurance coverage and better access to screening services likely drove these improvements.FRIDAY, Oct. 10, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Cancer patients are more likely to survive if they live in a state that expanded its Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), new research shows.Patients were more likely to have higher five-year and overall survival rates if their state had expanded Medicaid, researchers reported Oct. 8 in the journal Cancer.“The evidence supporting Medicaid expansion in improving outcomes for cancer patients is clear,” lead researcher Elizabeth Schafer, an associate scientist at the American Cancer Society, said in a news release.“Research has shown that Medicaid expansion can increase cancer screening prevalence, early-stage diagnosis, short-term survival and now — according to our own analysis — five-year survival,” she said. The ACA expansion gave states the option of expanding Medicaid eligibility to nearly all adults with incomes up to 138% of the poverty level, which is $21,597 for an individual in 2025, according to KFF.Ten states, mostly clustered in the South, haven’t expanded Medicaid to this day, KFF says. They are Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Kansas, Wyoming and Wisconsin.For the study, researchers compared cancer data from states during 2007 to 2008 — a period prior to Medicaid expansion — with data from 2014 to 2015, after many states had adopted the expansion.The analysis compared 26 expansion states with 12 states that hadn’t expanded Medicaid at the time, including more than 1.4 million cancer cases in adults ages 18 to 59.Results showed that five-year survival rates improved by more than 2.5 percentage points in states with Medicaid expansion.Likewise, improvement of overall survival rates was more than 3 percentage points better in Medicaid expansion states, the study says.Patients living in high-poverty areas also had significant improvements in survival if they lived in a Medicaid expansion state: 1.5 percentage points for five-year and 1.7 percentage points for overall survival.Prior studies have linked Medicaid expansion to better insurance coverage and access to cancer screening services, both of which can improve the odds of getting treatment and surviving cancer, researchers noted.“These findings underscore the importance of protecting and expanding Medicaid in the remaining 10 non-expansion states to improve outcomes for all individuals,” Schaefer said.In July, the Republican-led Congress approved massive cuts in Medicaid. The legislation increased copays, made it more difficult for states to fund their Medicaid programs and set more work requirements and eligibility checks.More informationKFF has more on state Medicaid expansion decisions.SOURCE: American Association for Cancer Research, news release, Oct. 8, 2025 .What This Means For YouCancer patients have better odds if they live in a Medicaid expansion state, researchers say.

Cancer Patients Face Better Odds In Medicaid Expansion States

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