Reconciling Seemingly Contradictory Results from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment and the Massachusetts Health Reform

Amanda Kowalski

No 24647, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: A headline result from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment is that emergency room (ER) utilization increased. A seemingly contradictory result from the Massachusetts health reform is that ER utilization decreased. I reconcile both results by identifying treatment effect heterogeneity within the Oregon experiment and extrapolating it to Massachusetts. Even though Oregon compliers increased their ER utilization, they were adversely selected relative to Oregon never takers, who would have decreased their ER utilization. Massachusetts expanded coverage from a higher level to healthier compliers. Therefore, Massachusetts compliers are comparable to a subset of Oregon never takers, which can reconcile the results.

JEL-codes: C1 H75 I10 I13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta, nep-hea and nep-ias
Note: AG EH PE TWP
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published as Amanda E. Kowalski, 2023. "Reconciling Seemingly Contradictory Results from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment and the Massachusetts Health Reform," Review of Economics and Statistics, vol 105(3), pages 646-664.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24647.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Reconciling Seemingly Contradictory Results from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment and the Massachusetts Health Reform (2023)
Working Paper: Reconciling Seemingly Contradictory Results from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment and the Massachusetts Health Reform (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24647

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24647

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().