Laura Wherry

Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Service

Contact Details

lrw8342@nyu.edu

212-998-7444

Office

The Puck Building
295 Lafayette Street
Room 3008
New York, NY 10012

Bio
Research

Bio

Laura Wherry's primary area of research focuses on the changing role of the Medicaid program and its impact on access to health care and health. Recent work examines the early effects of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansions, as well as the longer-term effects of several large expansions in Medicaid targeting low-income pregnant women and children in the 1980s and 1990s. Prior to joining NYU, she was an assistant professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Michigan.

Laura received her Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago's Harris School and her B.A. from the College of William and Mary.

Research

2021

Sarah Miller, Norman Johnson, and Laura R Wherry . Medicaid and Mortality: New Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data*. The Quarterly Journal of Economics

Forthcoming/Accepted

Medicaid and Mortality: New Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data*

Abstract

We use large-scale federal survey data linked to administrative death records to investigate the relationship between Medicaid enrollment and mortality. Our analysis compares changes in mortality for near-elderly adults in states with and without Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansions. We identify adults most likely to benefit using survey information on socioeconomic status, citizenship status, and public program participation. We find that, prior to the ACA expansions, mortality rates across expansion and nonexpansion states trended similarly, but beginning in the first year of the policy, there were significant reductions in mortality in states that opted to expand relative to nonexpanders. Individuals in expansion states experienced a 0.132 percentage point decline in annual mortality, a 9.4 percent reduction over the sample mean, as a result of the Medicaid expansions. The effect is driven by a reduction in disease-related deaths and grows over time. A variety of alternative specifications, methods of inference, placebo tests, and sample definitions confirm our main result.

2020

Rebecca Myerson, Samuel Crawford, and Laura R. Wherry. Medicaid Expansion Increased Preconception Health Counseling, Folic Acid Intake, And Postpartum Contraception. Health Affairs, 39(11), pp.1883-1890.

Abstract

The period before pregnancy is critically important for the health of a woman and her infant, yet not all women have access to health insurance during this time. We evaluated whether increased access to health insurance under the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansions affected ten preconception health indicators, including the prevalence of chronic conditions and health behaviors, birth control use and pregnancy intention, and receipt of preconception health services. By comparing changes in outcomes for low-income women in expansion and nonexpansion states, we document greater preconception health counseling, prepregnancy folic acid intake, and postpartum use of effective birth control methods among low-income women associated with Medicaid expansion. We do not find evidence of changes on the other preconception health indicators examined. Our findings indicate that expanding Medicaid led to detectable improvements on a subset of preconception health measures.