The Value of Health Insurance

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Tyler Cowen links to a new RAND study purporting to show, among other things, that “insurance status has no real effect on quality”—in other words, the insured don’t get significantly better care than the uninsured. I’m hardly the best person to pick apart this study, but on the face of things, that would be a surprising finding if true. A while back, I discussed a study by MIT economist Peter Doyle that used some clever methodology—he looked at car accident victims—and found that the uninsured really do get worse care from providers at critical moments than the insured do. Either way, the RAND study’s certainly interesting.

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