THE EFFECT OF MEDICAID ELIGIBILITY ON COVERAGE, UTILIZATION, AND CHILDREN'S HEALTH

SUMMARY I estimate the causal impact of Medicaid eligibility on take up, private health insurance coverage, healthcare utilization, and children's health by using a regression discontinuity design. In contrast to a standard regression discontinuity design, identification exploits multiple thres...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Health economics 2012-09, Vol.21 (9), p.1061-1079
Main Author: De La Mata, Dolores
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Causality
Child
Child Welfare - statistics & numerical data
Child, Preschool
Children & youth
children's health
Childrens health
Coverage
crowd out
Delivery of Health Care - utilization
Discontinuity
Eligibility
Eligibility Determination - economics
Eligibility Determination - statistics & numerical data
Health
Health economics
Health services utilization
healthcare utilization
Humans
Income - statistics & numerical data
Insurance Coverage
Medicaid
Medicaid - organization & administration
Medicaid - statistics & numerical data
Medicaid - utilization
Preventive Medicine - statistics & numerical data
public health insurance
Regression Analysis
regression discontinuity
Studies
Thresholds
United States
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Summary:SUMMARY I estimate the causal impact of Medicaid eligibility on take up, private health insurance coverage, healthcare utilization, and children's health by using a regression discontinuity design. In contrast to a standard regression discontinuity design, identification exploits multiple thresholds that arise from variation across states in income eligibility rules. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Study supplement, I find that Medicaid eligibility increases take up by 10–13 percentage points on average, rising to 24–29 percentage points at lower income eligibility thresholds. There are significant crowding out effects of the same magnitude as those on take up rates. Medicaid eligibility increases the use of preventive health care by 11–14 percentage points but only at low income thresholds. Finally, I find that Medicaid eligibility has no significant effects on health outcomes in the short and medium run. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ISSN:1057-9230
1099-1050
DOI:10.1002/hec.2857