Statistical Ambiguity Should Never Be Glossed Over

This study was conducted, as noted, by HHS researchers. This is certainly not disqualifying  per se, but it should cause us to readjust our priors. While peer-review has many, many problems as a vetting mechanism for quality, at least it ’s a  vetting mechanism. Moreover, generally speaking, more prestigious journals do tend to demand more scrupulous econometric work.It ’s worth noting that before we even dive into the methodology, the study itself admits that whatever causal effect is at play here, the likely mechanism is that newly eligible Medicaid enrollees in states that expanded Medicaid are lower-income and therefore in poorer health than those individuals earning in excess of 133% of the poverty line. This means that sicker-than-average individuals transfer from private insurance to Medicaid, which lowers the overall private risk pool, and thereby lowers premiums. Katz’ summary is correct when she carefully writes: “Expansion of Medicaid could l ower insurance prices for everyone else.” Indeed, it does lower insurance prices. But Medicaid doesn’t dragoon healthcare providers into working for free.Someone  still pays for these new enrollees, and that  someone  turns out to be taxpayers. This article does  not  demonstrate that there ’s a free lunch from Medicaid expansion. Conversely, “Because the states that didn’t expand had more sick people in their middle-class insurance pool, prices went up for everyone, the paper argues.” But,ceteris p...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs