Opinion: Defenders of Medicaid cuts are misunderstanding a study I worked on

There’s been much discussion and debate about the cuts to Medicaid eligibility that Congress just passed and, in particular, what they may mean for current Medicaid recipients. A key piece of evidence in this debate has been results from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment (OHIE), a randomized trial, which I helped lead, examining the impact of covering low-income uninsured adults with Medicaid for one to two years. While it’s always gratifying to see one’s work used in policy deliberations, it’s frustrating when the results are misinterpreted.

An important sticking point is the interpretation of so-called “null results” — estimates of Medicaid’s impact that we cannot statistically distinguish from no effect. In the case of the OHIE, we found no evidence of statistically significant impacts of Medicaid coverage on mortality, or on several measures of physical health, such as hypertension, high cholesterol, or diabetes.

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