The Value of Medicaid: Interpreting Results from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Finkelstein, Amy; Hendren, Nathaniel; Luttmer, Erzo F. P.
• 署名单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Harvard University; Dartmouth College
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-3808
• DOI: 10.1086/702238
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 2836-2874
• 关键词: PROGRAM PARTICIPATION; IMPACT; mortality; ECONOMICS; coverage; hazard; RISK

摘要

We develop frameworks for welfare analysis of Medicaid and apply them to the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment. Across different approaches, we estimate low-income uninsured adults' willingness to pay for Medicaid between $0.5 and $1.2 per dollar of the resource cost of providing Medicaid; estimates of the expected transfer Medicaid provides to recipients are relatively stable across approaches, but estimates of its additional value from risk protection are more variable. We also estimate that the resource cost of providing Medicaid to an additional recipient is only 40 percent of Medicaid's total cost; 60 percent of Medicaid spending is a transfer to providers of uncompensated care for the low-income uninsured.