The Montana Healthcare Foundation released a new report, “Medicaid in Montana: The Critical Role of Medicaid Expansion in Supporting Montana’s Behavioral Health System.” This new report shows how Medicaid expansion significantly increases access to care for mental illness and substance use disorders and supports a long-needed transformation in Montana’s behavioral health system.
Some of the report’s findings include:
- More people are getting care: Between 2019 and 2020, Medicaid expansion enrollee use of behavioral health services increased by 28 percent, and the use of tele-behavioral health increased by 3,112 percent.
- New funding supports the system: Increased access to and utilization of behavioral health services by expansion enrollees, combined with a nine-to-one federal spending match for payments, has brought nearly $54 million in new funding to Montana to support the state’s behavioral health system.
- The system has more resources and capacity: Medicaid expansion increased the resources available for substance use disorder prevention and treatment in Montana by nearly 70 percent and allowed funding for substance use disorder prevention services to double.