The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, an outgrowth of Oregon's 2008 lottery to allocate Medicaid slots to eligible residents, has released their
second year of results (Previous discussions on the
lottery and the
experiment). The gist of the results are that they found statisitically significant reductions in catastrophic health care expenditures, improvements in the incidences of depression, and increased use of health care services. They found minimal (and not statistically significant) improvements in the rates of physical health indicators (diabetes and hypertension) they tracked. Because of ethical concerns, there are no other randomized controlled tests on this scale that study the effects of Medicaid and few on the effects of health insurance in general (the only significant one being a
RAND study released 30 years ago). Because of the small amount of information available on the topic and the impending Medicaid expansion offered by Affordable Care Act, this study has drawn a lot of attention from political commentators. This will presumably be the last year these results will be published, as the state of Oregon was able to find
extra money in 2010 in order cover the rest of its Medicaid-eligible population.
[more inside]
posted by Weebot
on May 3, 2013 -
20 comments
The state of Oregon is holding a
health insurance lottery where 91,000 hopeful enrollees will be competing for a couple thousand spots under the Oregon Health Plan, the state's Medicaid program. OHP was created to cover those who made too much to enroll in traditional Medicaid but too little to afford market healthcare, and this development comes as a result of budget cuts and a subsequent enrollment closure in July of 2004. It's a far cry from the universal health care coverage that the plan was suppose to lead to, and marks a
dramatic turn for the state's once-ambitious health care reforms.
(Previously in dystopic health care developments)
posted by Weebot
on Mar 30, 2008 -
64 comments
Another embarrasment for Oregon. As if the government of my home state had not reached bottom, as far as actually acting in the interests of it's citizens, comes the news that the head of the State Senate Education Committee,
State Senator Charles Starr, has written a letter urging his constituents to "run, don't walk" away from public schools. This from the "leader" in the state legislature for public education. This ranks with Tonya Harding and the anti-gay Oregon Citizen's alliance as another in the growing list of lowlights for Oregonians.
posted by Danf
on Mar 7, 2003 -
32 comments
