When the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed, many politicians were concerned how increasing the demand for doctors before new physicians could be trained would impact healthcare. Martin Grace and Jingshu Luo study the medical malpractice costs assumed by insurers, doctors and hospitals following the ACA. 

The researchers find that healthcare professionals in Medicaid expansion states paid higher medical liability costs than those in non-expansion states in the years after the ACA was passed. Furthermore, an analysis of the impact of medical malpractice tort reforms suggests that increasing medical malpractice was driven not by the severity of medical errors, but by a higher frequency of small errors.