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

Michael Anderson, Carlos Dobkin and Tal Gross

Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz

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 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Keywords: Clinical Research; Behavioral and Social Science; Emergency Care; Pediatric; Basic Behavioral and Social Science; Health Services; Generic health relevance; Good Health and Well Being; Applied Economics; Econometrics; Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-03-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

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Related works:
Journal Article: 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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