And 1.29 million people are receiving treatment for substance use disorders or mental illnesses thanks to the Medicaid expansion, according to research conducted by Harvard Medical School Health Economics professor Richard Frank and New York University dean Sherry Glied. About 220,000 of those people are receiving treatment for opioid abuse.
Without the Medicaid expansion, the vast majority of those people would either fall into the “treatment gap” — unable to receive substance-use treatment because of a lack of insurance or public funds — or be forced to wait months or years to get into a publicly funded treatment program.
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