Recent Medicaid expansions sharply increased access to treatment for opioid use disorder, researchers find

Medicaid insurance expansions between 2017 and 2023 sharply increased access to medication treatment for opioid use disorder in a period when fatal overdoses continued to climb, according to Rutgers Health researchers. Their study, published in JAMA Network Open, finds that expanded Medicaid coverage yielded meaningful population-level increases in the use of buprenorphine, a medication used to treat opioid use disorder.