With the Republicans on the verge of dismantling the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid, much of their focus has been on how much healthcare insurance “costs”. I thought it would be timely to revisit a 2015 analysis in the American Journal of Public Health, “Considering Whether Medicaid is Worth the Cost: Revisiting the Oregon Health Study.” (full text) The investigators performed a cost-effectiveness analysis using data from the Oregon Health Study (OHS), the experiment that began in 2008 when the state randomly selected uninsured participants to apply for Medicaid coverage creating a randomized controlled trial of a social policy. They concluded that Medicaid is in fact a cost-effective program.
The authors’ cost-effectiveness analysis found that the observed benefit of providing Medicaid was $62,000 per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) gained. As a reference point, placing smoke detectors in homes provides a benefit of $210,000 per QALY.
The study reminds us that health benefits are best understood broadly and over the long term, rather than through a narrow focus on one year’s “cost” in the cost-effectiveness balance.
Marion R. Sills, MD, MPH 