New research suggests Medicaid expansion helped reduce opioid overdose deaths by facilitating access to treatment. The study, published Friday in JAMA Network Open, compared changes in opioid overdose rates in expansion states to changes within non-expansion states between 2001 and 2017, analyzing cause-of-death data from more than 3,100 counties across 49 states and the District of Columbia. The study found Medicaid expansion was associated with a 6% lower rate of overdose deaths compared with the rate in non-expansion states.