Medicaid expansion doesn’t just provide more people health insurance — it appears to cut medical debt enormously. The Affordable Care Act offered states a huge infusion of federal money to expand Medicaid eligibility to low-income adults, and about 30 states took that deal right away. Since then, new medical debt in those states has fallen 44 percent, a bigger drop than was seen in the states that refused to expand the program. Those states showed only a 10 percent decline.