{"id":20075,"date":"2013-05-02T10:43:10","date_gmt":"2013-05-02T15:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=20075"},"modified":"2013-05-02T10:43:10","modified_gmt":"2013-05-02T15:43:10","slug":"cherrypicking-the-result-you-prefer-from-a-recent-medicaid-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/05\/02\/cherrypicking-the-result-you-prefer-from-a-recent-medicaid-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Cherrypicking the result you prefer from a recent Medicaid study"},"content":{"rendered":"

Megan McArdle<\/a> explains why a recent study’s results may be much more important than you might gather from the way it’s been reported so far:<\/p>\n

Bombshell news out of Oregon today: a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) of what happens to people when they gain Medicaid eligibility shows no impact on objective measures of health. Utilization went up, out-of-pocket expenditure went down, and the freqency of depression diagnoses was lower. But on the three important health measures they checked that we can measure objectively — glycated hemoglobin, a measure of blood sugar levels; blood pressure; and cholesterol levels — there was no significant improvement. <\/p>\n

I know: sounds boring. Glycated hemoglobin! I might as well be one of the adults on Charlie Brown going wawawawawawa . . . and you fell asleep, didn’t you? <\/p>\n

But this is huge news if you care about health care policy — and given the huge national experiment we’re about to embark on, you’d better. Bear with me.<\/p>\n

Some of the news reports I’ve seen so far are somewhat underselling just how major these results are. <\/p>\n

“Study: Medicaid reduces financial hardship, doesn\u2019t quickly improve physical health” says the Washington Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press headline reads “Study: Depression rates for uninsured dropped with Medicaid coverage”<\/p>\n

At the New York Times<\/em>, it’s “Study Finds Expanded Medicaid Increases Health Care Use”<\/p>\n

I think Slate<\/em> is closer to the mark, though a bit, well, Slate<\/em>-ish: “Bad News for Obamacare: A new study suggests universal health care makes people happier but not healthier.”<\/p>\n

This study is a big, big deal. Let me explain why. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Megan McArdle explains why a recent study’s results may be much more important than you might gather from the way it’s been reported so far: Bombshell news out of Oregon today: a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) of what happens to people when they gain Medicaid eligibility shows no impact on objective measures of health. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,28,13],"tags":[213,696,162,290],"class_list":["post-20075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-media","category-usa","tag-newspapers","tag-oregon","tag-socializedmedicine","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5dN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20076,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20075\/revisions\/20076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}