articleThe Quarterly Journal of EconomicsMay 5, 2012BRONZE OA

The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment: Evidence from the First Year*

AFAmy FinkelsteinSTSarah TaubmanBWBill WrightMBMira BernsteinJGJonathan Gruber

National Bureau of Economic Research · Harvard University

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Abstract

In 2008, a group of uninsured low-income adults in Oregon was selected by lottery to be given the chance to apply for Medicaid. This lottery provides an opportunity to gauge the effects of expanding access to public health insurance on the health care use, financial strain, and health of low-income adults using a randomized controlled design. In the year after random assignment, the treatment group selected by the lottery was about 25 percentage points more likely to have insurance than the control group that was not selected. We find that in this first year, the treatment group had substantively and statistically significantly higher health care utilization (including primary and preventive care as well as…

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Topics & keywords

Topics
Keywords
  • Lottery
  • Medicaid
  • Public health insurance
  • Treatment and control groups
  • Health insurance
  • Debt
  • Health care
  • Public health
UN Sustainable Development Goals
  • No poverty
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