Two weeks ago the first paper was released reporting results from a new important medical study, the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment. Many are comparing it favorably to the RAND Health Insurance Experiment,
> So even if insurance increases health marginally, it doesn’t save anyone money?
Seems plausible to me. Hanson didn't cover this (NRO did) but one of the interesting results was that emergency room use did not go down in the insurance group (and the author remark that while not statistically significant, use may have gone up).
I don't know about you, but I remember hearing it asserted in the health care debate that the poor overused emergency rooms as their 'primary care' and that this was a major source of waste that national health insurance would reduce. Well. Guess not.
So even if insurance increases health marginally, it doesn't save anyone money?
Though that could also be due to the inability of the test group to pay for insurance at all - they can't exactly cut back.
More importantly is that studies like these should be bog-standard. It's the most basic of basic tests. Instead, there's two. For example, opportunity cost: is there anything cheaper than can achieve 5% more healthy days? Probably! But we don't know what, because nobody has bothered to look. It would be funny if one of those things was going to church.
Cognitive dissonance hypothesis for why having insurance makes people report feeling better: People don't want to get medical treatment for every problem they notice. Inattention to health is generally disapproved of, so they find another reason. Those without insurance use "I can't afford it." Those with insurance do not have this excuse, so instead go with "It's nothing, I'm healthy."
Obviously this study is weak evidence of the efficacy of health care. But when you do your Bayesian updating Robin, did this increase or decrease the probability healthcare improves health relative to your prior? We know your prior is strongly against marginal medicine improving health. And frankly, so is mine. And while the effect is small, my posterior gives medicine a higher chance after reading about Oregon.
David I find myself in the same position as you about this data.
> So even if insurance increases health marginally, it doesn’t save anyone money?
Seems plausible to me. Hanson didn't cover this (NRO did) but one of the interesting results was that emergency room use did not go down in the insurance group (and the author remark that while not statistically significant, use may have gone up).
I don't know about you, but I remember hearing it asserted in the health care debate that the poor overused emergency rooms as their 'primary care' and that this was a major source of waste that national health insurance would reduce. Well. Guess not.
So even if insurance increases health marginally, it doesn't save anyone money?
Though that could also be due to the inability of the test group to pay for insurance at all - they can't exactly cut back.
More importantly is that studies like these should be bog-standard. It's the most basic of basic tests. Instead, there's two. For example, opportunity cost: is there anything cheaper than can achieve 5% more healthy days? Probably! But we don't know what, because nobody has bothered to look. It would be funny if one of those things was going to church.
If I am reading the paper right, while uncollected bills fell slightly in the insured group, no other measure - such as bankruptcy - fell.
Cognitive dissonance hypothesis for why having insurance makes people report feeling better: People don't want to get medical treatment for every problem they notice. Inattention to health is generally disapproved of, so they find another reason. Those without insurance use "I can't afford it." Those with insurance do not have this excuse, so instead go with "It's nothing, I'm healthy."
Obviously this study is weak evidence of the efficacy of health care. But when you do your Bayesian updating Robin, did this increase or decrease the probability healthcare improves health relative to your prior? We know your prior is strongly against marginal medicine improving health. And frankly, so is mine. And while the effect is small, my posterior gives medicine a higher chance after reading about Oregon.