Expanding Medicaid, Expanding the Electorate: The Affordable Care Act's Short-Term Impact on Political Participation.

The Affordable Care Act is a landmark piece of social legislation with the potential to reshape health care in the United States. Its potential to reshape politics is also considerable, but existing scholarship suggests conflicting expectations about the law's policy feedbacks, especially given unev...

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Published in:Journal of Health Politics, Policy & Law Vol. 42; no. 4; pp. 668 - 697
Main Author: Haselswerdt, Jake
Format: Article
Published: Duke University Press Aug2017
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: Expanding Medicaid, Expanding the Electorate: The Affordable Care Act's Short-Term Impact on Political Participation.
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        au: Haselswerdt, Jake
        affil: University of Missouri
      su:
        United States
        Medicaid law
        Elections
        Ethnic groups
        Federal government
        Political participation
        Self-evaluation
        Voting
        Socioeconomic factors
        Cross-sectional method
        Medically uninsured persons
        Policy science research
        Research funding
        Surveys
        Logistic regression analysis
        Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act
        Statistical models
        Health care reform
      sug:
        subj:
          Medicaid law
          Elections
          Ethnic groups
          Federal government
          Political participation
          Self-evaluation
          Voting
          Socioeconomic factors
          Cross-sectional method
          United States
          Administration of Human Resource Programs (except Education, Public Health, and Veterans' Affairs Programs)
          Medically uninsured persons
          Policy science research
          Research funding
          Surveys
          Logistic regression analysis
          Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act
          Statistical models
          Health care reform
      keyword:
        Congress
        health care reform
        implementation
        Medicaid
        Congress
        health care reform
        implementation
        Medicaid
      ab: The Affordable Care Act is a landmark piece of social legislation with the potential to reshape health care in the United States. Its potential to reshape politics is also considerable, but existing scholarship suggests conflicting expectations about the law's policy feedbacks, especially given uneven state-level implementation. In this article I focus on the policy feedbacks of the law's Medicaid expansion on political participation, using district-level elections data for 2012 and 2014 US House races and cross-sectional survey data from 2014. I find that the increases in Medicaid enrollment associated with the expansion are related to considerably higher voter turnout and that this effect was likely due to both an increase in turnout for new beneficiaries and a backlash effect among conservative voters opposed to the law and its implementation. These results have important implications for our understanding of the ACA and of the impact of welfare state expansions on political participation, particularly in federalized systems.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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