Skimming McMegan's latest, I come across this:
A few years back, Oregon found enough money in its budget to add 10,000 people to Medicaid. Because more than 10,000 people wanted to go on Medicaid, it used a lottery to hand out slots ... and thus gave researchers an excellent setup for a randomized controlled trial of the effect that health insurance had on peoples’ lives.
My first thought: yes, but it wasn't double-blind!
My second thought: Obamacare, plus the healthcare.gov fiasco, may offer a golden opportunity for a double-blind study of the usefulness of health insurance / prepaid health plans.
Because, at this point: there's a large pool of potential patients who don't know whether or not they have coverage, and neither do their doctors.
So long as everyone is kept in the dark, this provides perfect conditions for an ambitious study!
Well... as long as the covered-or-not condition of the subjects can eventually be determined. Does no good to collect data on individual outcomes unless, after the fact, you can assign each subject to the correct group.
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