Republican Claims That People Are Better Off Having No Insurance than Having Medicaid: For the Virtual Green Room
Rebutted by Amy Finkelstein et al.:
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 a unique 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 hospitalizations), lower out-of-pocket medical expenditures and medical debt (including fewer bills sent to collection), and better self-reported physical and mental health than the control group.
And Ezra Klein:
Amazing Fact! Science Proves Health Insurance Works: Compared with the uninsured group, those in the Medicaid sample got 30 percent more hospital care, 35 percent more outpatient care and 15 percent more prescription-drug care. There were similar gains for preventive care; mammograms were up 60 percent and cholesterol monitoring rose 20 percent. The Medicaid recipients also had fewer unpaid bills sent to collection, were 25 percent more likely to report themselves in “good” or “excellent” health, and 10 percent less likely to screen positive for depression. The one surprise was that there was no evidence of “crowd-out”: Medicaid coverage didn’t make someone more or less likely to purchase private insurance...
And Austin Frakt:
Compared to the uninsured group, those in the Medicaid group: received 30% more hospital care, received 35% more outpatient care, were 15% more like to use prescription drugs, received 60% more mammograms, received 20% more cholesterol checks, were 15% more likely to have had a blood tested for high blood sugar or diabetes, were 45% more likely to have had a pap test within the last year (for women), had lower out-of-pocket medical expenditures and medical debt, had a 40% lower probability of needing to borrow money or skip payment on other bills because of medical expenses, incurred $778 more in spending on health care in one year, a 25% increase over the uninsured mean spending level, were 25% percent more likely to report themselves in “good” or “excellent” health, were 70% more likely to have a usual source of care, were 55% more likely to see the same doctor over time, reported better physical and mental health, were 10% percent less likely to screen positive for depression...
