Association between Medicaid Expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Preemptive Listings for Kidney Transplantation

Background and objectives Before 2014, low-income individuals in the United States with non–dialysis-dependent CKD had fewer options to attain health insurance, limiting their opportunities to be preemptively wait-listed for kidney transplantation. We examined whether expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act was associated with differences in the number of individuals who were pre-emptively wait-listed with Medicaid coverage. Design, setting, participants, & measurements Using the United Network of Organ Sharing database, we performed a retrospective observational study of adults (age≥18 years) listed for kidney transplantation before dialysis dependence between January 1, 2011–December 31, 2013 (pre-Medicaid expansion) and January 1, 2014–December 31, 2016 (post-Medicaid expansion). In multinomial logistic regression models, we compared trends in insurance types used for pre-emptive wait-listing in states that did and did not expand Medicaid with a difference-in-differences approach. Results States that fully implemented Medicaid expansion on January 1, 2014 (“expansion states,” n =24 and the District of Columbia) had a 59% relative increase in Medicaid-covered pre-emptive listings from the pre-expansion to postexpansion period (from 1094 to 1737 listings), compared with an 8.8% relative increase (from 330 to 359 listings) among 19 Medicaid nonexpansion states ( P P =0.09), and increased by 3.0 percentage points among expansion states (from 7.0% to 10.0%, P P Conclusions Medicaid expansion was associated with an increase in the proportion of new pre-emptive listings for kidney transplantation with Medicaid coverage, with larger increases in Medicaid coverage among racial and ethnic minority listings than among white listings.