Who Increases Emergency Department Use? New Insights from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment. (arXiv:2201.07072v2 [econ.EM] UPDATED)

We provide new insights into the finding that Medicaid increased emergency
department (ED) use from the Oregon experiment. Using nonparametric causal
machine learning methods, we find economically meaningful treatment effect
heterogeneity in the impact of Medicaid coverage on ED use. The effect
distribution is widely dispersed, with significant positive effects
concentrated among high-use individuals. A small group - about 14% of
participants - in the right tail with significant increases in ED use drives
the overall effect. The remainder of …

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