An Exploratory Analysis of the Medicaid Expenditures of Substance Exposed Children Under 2 Years of Age in California

This project was designed to explore the utilization and expenditures to Medicaid of substance exposed children, using data on the experience of children born in California in 1986, 1987 and 1988. The Medicaid experience of these children in their first two years of life was the focus of the analysis. The study also included a randomly sampled comparison group of Medicaid children in California without identified substance exposure problems. The analysis was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, data from the Medicaid Tape-to-Tape data set for California were analyzed. Tape-to-Tape is a multi-State Medicaid data base developed by the Office of Research and Demonstrations at the Health Care Financing Administration. In the second phase of the analysis, the Medicaid Tape-to-Tape data were merged with California Vital Statistics data (birth records). This merger enabled the analysis of factors (substance exposure and others) associated with low birth weight among Medicaid infants, as well as the subsequent impacts of low birth weight, substance exposure, and other factors upon Medicaid expenditures. [70 PDF pages]