Who Increases Emergency Department Use? New Insights from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment

Augustine Denteh and Helge Liebert

No 9664, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We provide new insights regarding the finding that Medicaid increased emergency department (ED) use from the Oregon experiment. We find meaningful heterogeneous impacts of Medicaid on ED use using causal machine learning methods. The treatment effect distribution is widely dispersed, and the average effect is not representative of most individualized treatment effects. A small group—about 14% of participants—in the right tail of the distribution drives the overall effect. We identify priority groups with economically significant increases in ED usage based on demographics and prior utilization. Intensive margin effects are an important driver of increases in ED utilization.

Keywords: Medicaid; ED use; effect heterogeneity; causal machine learning; optimal policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H75 I13 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-cmp, nep-exp and nep-ias
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: Who Increases Emergency Department Use? New Insights from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment (2023)
Working Paper: Who Increases Emergency Department Use? New Insights from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment (2022)
Working Paper: Who Increases Emergency Department Use? New Insights from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment (2022)
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