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Journal Article
Art's economic power in New England
Report
Can Treatment with Medications for Opioid Use Disorder Improve Employment Prospects? Evidence from Rhode Island Medicaid Enrollees
The nation’s long-standing crisis of opioid abuse intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, with opioid-related deaths rising to nearly 81,000 in 2021, an increase of more than 60 percent from just two years earlier. Also during the pandemic, the labor force participation rate in the United States fell precipitously, and as of September 2022 it remained depressed by more than a full percentage point relative to its February 2020 level despite record numbers of job openings in 2021 and 2022. The unfortunate confluence of labor shortages and record-setting opioid mortality highlights the need ...
Working Paper
Employment Trajectories among Individuals with Opioid Use Disorder: Can Evidence-Based Treatment Improve Outcomes?
Using administrative records of Medicaid enrollees in Rhode Island that link their health-care information with their payroll employment records, this paper produces new stylized facts concerning the association between opioid use disorder (OUD) and employment and inquires as to whether treatment with FDA-approved medications might boost the job-finding rates of OUD patients. We find that individuals diagnosed with OUD are less likely to be employed compared with other Medicaid enrollees, that their employment tends to be more intermittent, and that they face increased job-separation risk ...
Report
The Medicaid Expansion and the Uptake of Medication-assisted Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder: Evidence from the Rhode Island All-payer Claims Database, 2012–2018
This article uses the all-payer claims database for the state of Rhode Island to assess recent progress in the state toward the goal of expanding access to medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid use disorder (OUD). The analysis highlights the role played by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the associated Medicaid expansion in furthering that goal. Using measures that account for changes in health insurance enrollment, we find that the MAT rate per 100,000 enrollees in Rhode Island effectively doubled between 2012 and 2018, while the prevalence of OUD in the sample also doubled over ...
Journal Article
Comments on 2000 benchmark revisions to regional employment data
Journal Article
Will the tobacco settlement payments go up in smoke?
In December 1995, Massachusetts attorney general Scott Harshbarger filed a civil suit against the tobacco industry. The Commonwealths lawsuit charged that the tobacco industry had conducted research into the addictive properties of nicotine and used this research to willfully manipulate the nicotine level of cigarettes in order to addict smokers and increase cigarette sales. The lawsuit asked the court for damages to compensate the Commonwealth for expenditures paid to treat smoking-related illnesses. At the time this litigation was filed, Massachusetts was the fifth state in the nation to ...
Journal Article
Comments on 2001 benchmark revisions to regional employment data
In March 2002, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released revised state and regional employment data based on the 2001 benchmark, affecting data for 2000 and 2001. Contrary to the employment boost shown in last year's revisions, the 2002 revisions increased New England's measured employment levels slightly for 2000 and reduced them in nearly all states and industries for 2001. Furthermore, the revisions show that the recession that began in 2001 had a deeper impact on employment in the region than in the nation, as New England's year-end employment decreased for the first time in a ...
Report
Did the Medicaid Expansion Crowd Out Other Payment Sources for Medications for Opioid Use Disorder? Evidence from Rhode Island
Using information from the all-payer claims database for Rhode Island covering more than three-quarters of health insurance enrollees in the state from April 2011 through May 2019, this paper offers new measures of the association between the Medicaid expansion and the rate of receipt of buprenorphine and methadone for opioid use disorder (OUD). These robust measures adjust for the extent to which new Medicaid payments for these medications that started in 2014 crowded out payments from either non-Medicaid insurance or from non-insurance subsidies for the treatment of opioid abuse. We find ...
Report
Access to medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder: is Rhode Island different, and why?
This paper assesses the prevalence of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) among treatment episodes for opioid use disorder (OUD) in Rhode Island, as compared with the remaining New England states and the United States as a whole. Based on the Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS-A), a national census of admissions into publicly funded treatment facilities for substance use disorders, we find that during the period beginning in 2000 through 2017, Rhode Island exhibited a greater tendency to use MAT as part of OUD treatment compared with the average state in the United States and compared with the ...