Impact of Medicaid expansion on the multimodal treatment of biliary tract cancer

Abstract Introduction The impact of Medicaid expansion (ME) on the treatment of patients with cancer remains controversial, especially individuals requiring complex multidisciplinary care. We sought to evaluate the impact of Medicaid expansion (ME) on receipt of multimodal care, including surgical resection, for Stage I–III biliary tract cancer (BTC). Methods Patients diagnosed with BTC between 40 and 65 years of age were identified from the National Cancer Database and divided into pre‐ (2008–2012) and post‐ (2015–2018) ME cohorts. Difference‐in‐difference (DID) analysis was used to determine the impact of ME on the utilization of surgery and multimodal chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy treatment for BTC. Results Among 12,415 patients with BTC (extrahepatic, n = 5622, 45.3%; intrahepatic, n = 4352, 35.1%; gallbladder, n = 1944, 15.7%; overlapping, n = 497, 4.0%), 5835 (47.0%) and 6580 (53.0%) patients were diagnosed before versus after ME, respectively. Overall utilization of surgery (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.02–1.26) and multimodality therapy (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.01–1.27) increased in states that adopted ME. Utilization of surgery among uninsured/Medicaid patients in ME states increased relative to patients living in non‐ME states (∆+10.1%, p = 0.01). Similarly, the use of multimodal treatment increased among uninsured/Medicaid patients living in ME versus non‐ME states (∆+6.4%, p = 0.04); in contrast, there were no difference among patients with other insurance statuses (overall: ∆+1.5%, private: ∆−2.0%, other: ∆+3.9%, all p > 0.5). Uninsured/Medicaid patients with BTC who lived in a ME state had a lower risk of long‐term death in the post‐ME era (HR 0.81, 95% CI 0.67–0.98; p = 0.03). Conclusions Implementation of ME positively impacted survival among patients who underwent surgical and multimodal treatment for Stage I–III BTC.