The Oregon Experiment — Effects of Medicaid on Clinical Outcomes

Abstract

In 2008, Oregon initiated a limited expansion of its Medicaid program for low-income adults through a lottery drawing of approximately 30,000 names from a waiting list of almost 90,000 persons. Selected adults won the opportunity to apply for Medicaid and to enroll if they met eligibility requirements. This lottery presented an opportunity to study the effects of Medicaid with the use of random assignment. Earlier, nonrandomized studies sought to investigate the effect of Medicaid on health outcomes in adults with the use of quasi-experimental approaches.1–3 Although these approaches can be an improvement over observational designs and often involve larger . . .