State Medicaid programs are increasingly paying for immediate postpartum long-acting reversible contraception (LARC).

Analyzing data from sixteen states during the period 2012–18, Taryn Quinlan and coauthors find that Medicaid coverage of postpartum LARC increases its use overall, with increases among Black mothers and Hispanic mothers that are 3.7 and 5.5 percentage points greater than those among White mothers, respectively.

"Given that White respondents’ use of postpartum LARC did not change significantly after policy implementation, we hypothesize that White Medicaid enrollees had been largely successful in accessing their preferred contraception methods before state adoption of the payment changes," the authors write.

The authors also discuss the policy implications of their research, emphasizing that "additional work should examine whether this increase reflects patients’ preferences and whether hospitals’ immediate postpartum LARC policies and practices take a patient-centered approach that supports reproductive autonomy and equity."

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