Oregon Health Study
In 2008, for reasons of cost, Oregon's Medicaid agency accepted 10,000 uninsured low-income adults into its insurance program based on a lottery with 89,824 applicants. In the Oregon Health Study, Newhouse and others tracked the effects on those who were accepted and rejected. They found that health insurance improved peoples' health and lives generally, but they also spent more money on health care.
According to economist Katherine Baicker, the study "put to rest two incorrect arguments."
“The first is that Medicaid doesn’t do anything for people, because it’s bad insurance or because the uninsured have other ways of getting care. The second is that Medicaid coverage saves money” by increasing preventive care, for instance.
“It’s up to society to determine whether it’s worth the cost,” said Baicker.
Read more about this topic: RAND Health Insurance Experiment
Famous quotes containing the words oregon, health and/or study:
“The Oregon [matter] and the annexation of Texas are now all- important to the security and future peace and prosperity of our union, and I hope there are a sufficient number of pure American democrats to carry into effect the annexation of Texas and [extension of] our laws over Oregon. No temporizing policy or all is lost.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“To get time for civic work, for exercise, for neighborhood projects, reading or meditation, or just plain time to themselves, mothers need to hold out against the fairly recent but surprisingly entrenched myth that “good mothers” are constantly with their children. They will have to speak out at last about the demoralizing effect of spending day after day with small children, no matter how much they love them.”
—Wendy Coppedge Sanford. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, introduction (1978)
“I urge you to spend your youth profitably in study and virtue.... In brief, let me see in you an abyss of knowledge.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)