Johanna Catherine Maclean, Ezra Golberstein, Bradley Stein
{"title":"State Paid Sick Leave Mandates Associated with Increased Mental Health Disorder Prescriptions among Medicaid Enrollees","authors":"Johanna Catherine Maclean, Ezra Golberstein, Bradley Stein","doi":"10.1093/haschl/qxae045","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n The United States does not have a federal paid sick leave policy. As a result, many workers, in particular lower wage workers, cannot take time off work to attend to health and family responsibilities. Fifteen states have adopted or announced paid sick leave mandates which offer employees approximately seven days of financially protected work-time each year. This time can facilitate health care use, including treatment related to mental health disorders, conditions for which treatment is time-consuming. We study the effect of state paid sick leave mandates on prescription medications dispensed for mental health disorders using the Medicaid State Drug Utilization Database 2011-2022. We find that medications dispensed for mental health disorders increased 6% per year following adoption of a state paid sick leave mandate.","PeriodicalId":94025,"journal":{"name":"Health affairs scholar","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Health affairs scholar","FirstCategoryId":"0","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/haschl/qxae045","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The United States does not have a federal paid sick leave policy. As a result, many workers, in particular lower wage workers, cannot take time off work to attend to health and family responsibilities. Fifteen states have adopted or announced paid sick leave mandates which offer employees approximately seven days of financially protected work-time each year. This time can facilitate health care use, including treatment related to mental health disorders, conditions for which treatment is time-consuming. We study the effect of state paid sick leave mandates on prescription medications dispensed for mental health disorders using the Medicaid State Drug Utilization Database 2011-2022. We find that medications dispensed for mental health disorders increased 6% per year following adoption of a state paid sick leave mandate.