Medicaid Expansion benefits public safety

In an op-ed in Wednesday's Missoulian supporting Medicaid expansion, ACLU executive director Caitlin Borgmann makes two additional points that haven't received much attention:
1) Medicaid expansion enhances public safety. Unsurprisingly, crime rates fall with increasing access to mental health care and treatment for substance use disorders. This relationship was recently emphasized by UM's Bureau of Business and Economic Research, which found that social benefits from reduced crime due to Medicaid expansion amounts to the billions of dollars.
2) Medicaid expansion "also helps those on probation and parole successfully find their way out of the system" again through greater access to health services for mental health and substance abuse issues.

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