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
Two years since Massachusetts instituted major statewide
healthcare reform, the
statistics are coming in.
340,000 residents, roughly half the state's previously uninsured, are now insured. The state says that
95% of its population is now covered, based on Department of Revenue estimates. However, a large portion of them are enrolled through state-subsidized insurance programs, and those program's rate of enrollment have far
outpaced estimates. This has led lawmakers to forsee a budget
shortfall. Premiums and co-pays are going
up, cigarette taxes have
increased, and a
cost control proposal is making its way through the legislature. Assessments
have been all over the map.
posted by Weebot
on Jul 2, 2008 -
79 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
