The Effect of Health Insurance on Emergency Department Visits: Evidence from an Age-Based Eligibility Threshold

Michael Anderson, Carlos Dobkin and Tal Gross

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2014, vol. 96, issue 1, 189-195

Abstract: Health insurance affects the rate at which individuals visit hospitals and emergency departments (EDs). We identify the causal effect of losing health insurance using a regression discontinuity design. We compare individuals just before and after their twenty third birthday, which insurers have used as a cutoff after which students are no longer eligible for their parents' health insurance: 1.5% of young adults lose their health insurance upon turning 23, and this transition leads to a 1.6% decrease in ED visits and a 0.8% decrease in hospital stays. We discuss why these estimates are larger than those observed among teenage populations. © 2014 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Keywords: health insurance; health care utilization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G22 I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

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Working Paper: The Effect of Health Insurance on Emergency Department Visits: Evidence from an Age-Based Eligibility Threshold (2014)
Working Paper: The Effect of Health Insurance on Emergency Department Visits: Evidence from an Age-Based Eligibility Threshold (2014)
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