Contrary to fears that the long-time uninsured who became eligible for Medicaid under Affordable Care Act eligibility expansion would turn to providers with a long litany of expensive-to-treat medical problems, preliminary data suggests that such individuals are actually less costly to treat than the average Medicaid recipient.

Preliminary data released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services based on claims data from the first quarter of 2014 – the first time period after Medicaid expansion began in some states – found that the average new adult Medicaid enrollee cost $4513 to serve, as opposed to the $7150 it cost to serve Medicaid beneficiaries across all groups.

The Kaiser Family Foundation has done a great deal of analysis of early data under Medicaid expansion, looking at costs per beneficiary, geographic data, Medicaid expansion states, enrollment changes, and more. Find its extensive analyses here in the report “Medicaid Expansion Spending and Enrollment in Context: An Early Look at CMS Claims Data for 2014.”