For the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers examined new evidence from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, a controlled evaluation of the effects of Medicaid expansion.
Prior results from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment showed that extending Medicaid coverage led to increased healthcare use across a range of settings — there were more visits to physicians, prescription drugs used and hospitalizations, according to a news release. There was also a 40 percent increase in ED use in the first 15 months after people gained coverage.
Additionally, researchers estimated the effect of Medicaid coverage on whether the person had an office visit and whether he or she had an ED visit. They found no evidence that Medicaid coverage makes use of the physician’s office and use of the ED more substitutable for one another.
“For policymakers thinking about expansions, our results suggest that a typical Medicaid program will increase healthcare use across settings — including the ED — for at least two years, and that it won’t lead people to go to the doctor instead of the ED,” Katherine Baicker, PhD, C. Boyden Gray Professor of Health Economics at Harvard Chan School, said in a statement.
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