Russ Roberts draws him out. Much of the focus is on the fact that almost half of the people who won the lottery to obtain Medicaid coverage then did not apply.
What that means, Manzi suggests, is that the group of people who obtained Medicaid coverage, rather than blow it off, may have been different from the control group that lost the lottery. That is, you don’t have two groups–winners and losers. You have three groups–losers of the lottery, winners who took coverage, and winners who did not take coverage. Manzi is saying that one cannot be sure that the winners who took coverage are comparable to the losers, which makes the results difficult to interpret.
Previously, Russ interviewed Austin Frakt on the study.
So it’s not valid to compare those who were offered it and claimed it to those who were not offered it; that makes sense. It still makes sense to compare all of those who were offered it, both claiming and unclaiming, to those who were not offered, right? If the offer made a big difference to outcomes on the margin, we should still see a significant difference between offerees and non-offerees, right? Did the study look at this comparison?
It’s hard to argue that winners have properties that make them immune to medical bankruptcy; clearly OPM would have something to do with this, no?
What about the group that chose not to even apply for the lottery?