Katherine Baicker
Biographic Data
| ID | 1470783 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Katherine Baicker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Katherine |
| FAMILY NAME | Baicker |
| SIGNATURE | BAICKER K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5960-3058 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 215 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Effect of Medicaid on Crime: Evidence from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment
Those involved with the criminal justice system have disproportionately high rates of mental illness and substance-use disorders, prompting speculation that health insurance, by improving treatment of these conditions, could reduce crime. Using the 2008 Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, which randomly made some low-income adults eligible to apply for Medicaid, we find no statistically significant impact of Medicaid coverage on criminal charges …
Evidence of Policy Effects on Infrequent but Important Outcomes—Lessons From the Medicaid Mortality Debate
This JAMA Forum discusses the importance of scientific evidence to support health policy in the context of the recent passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its cuts to Medicaid
Can Prevention Save Money
This JAMA Forum discusses some key considerations for addressing the question of whether and when prevention interventions are worth the cost
Investing in Long-Term Health
This JAMA Forum discusses treatment and health care delivery, innovative use of risk analytics, and spending and coverage priorities in the US health insurance system
Developing Evidence-Based Health Policy for Dementia Care
This JAMA Forum discusses developments in health policy that may help address issues, including rising costs and complex care delivery, in the treatment of patients with Alzheimer disease and related dementias in the US
Better Data to Improve Medicaid
This JAMA Forum discusses the current data collection mechanisms used for Medicare and proposes ways to improve nationwide data collection efforts for Medicaid
Jama Health Forum Peer Reviewers in 2022
A Different Framework to Achieve Universal Coverage in the US
This JAMA Forum discusses alternative ways to achieve universal coverage in the US such as administrative simplification in the Affordable Care Act plans to increase enrollment, having a basic policy that would be available to everyone, and options for supplemental coverage
How Much Safety Did the Social Safety Net Provide During the Covid-19 Pandemic
This JAMA Forum discusses the successes, failures, and lessons learned regarding the performance of US social safety-net programs during the COVID-19 pandemic
Achieving Universal Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: Addressing Market Failures or Providing a Social Floor
The United States spends substantially more on health care than most developed countries, yet leaves a greater share of the population uninsured. We argue that incremental insurance expansions focused on addressing market failures will propagate inefficiencies and will fail to facilitate the active policy decisions needed to achieve socially optimal coverage. By instead defining a basic bundle of services that is publicly financed for all, while …
Evidence, Anecdotes, and Health Policy
Overuse and Underuse of Health Care: New Insights From Economics and Machine Learning
Rampant overuse of health care in the US is plain to see. The traditional explanation from health economics is straightforward: bad incentives. Paying physicians too much leads to more carewhether patients need it or not. But paying physicians too little risks limiting patients' access to care
Tying Innovation to Evaluation and Accountability in Programs to Address Intersecting Health and Social Needs
This JAMA Forum advocates for rigorous assessment of the effectiveness of programs and initiatives addressing health-related social needs to improve health outcomes
Medicaid, Health, and the Moderating Role of Neighborhood Characteristics
Do Workplace Wellness Programs Work
Addressing the COVID-19 pandemic is by far the most pressing health policy issue of the day. But
Trade-offs in Public Health Insurance Design
Rethinking Health Insurance Design
Using social and behavioural science to support Covid-19 pandemic response
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behavior with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on nav…
Using social and behavioural science to support Covid-19 pandemic response
The Impact of Medicaid Expansion on Voter Participation: Evidence from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment
In 2008, a group of uninsured low-income adults in Oregon was selected by lottery for the chance to apply for Medicaid. Using this randomized design and state administrative data on voter behavior, we analyze how a Medicaid expansion affected voter turnout and registration. We find that Medicaid increased voter turnout in the November 2008 Presidential election by about 7 percent overall, with the effects concentrated in men (18 percent increase)…
Health Insurance Coverage and Health — What the Recent Evidence Tells Us
The authors report their analysis of the highest quality research over the past decade examining the effects of health insurance on health and conclude that insurance coverage increases access to care and improves health outcomes.
Short-term Outcomes for Medicare Beneficiaries After Low-acuity Visits to Emergency Departments and Clinics
BACKGROUND: There is substantial interest in identifying low-acuity visits to emergency departments (EDs) that could be treated more appropriately in other settings. Systematic differences in illness severity between ED patients and comparable patients elsewhere could make such strategies unsafe, but little evidence exists to guide policy makers. OBJECTIVE: To compare illness severity between patients visiting EDs and outpatient clinics, by compa…
Medicaid Increases Emergency-Department Use: Evidence from Oregon's Health Insurance Experiment
Health Economy? The intensity of arguments over social science issues often seems inversely correlated with the quantity of experimental evidence. Taubman et al. (p. 263 , published online 2 January; see the Policy Forum by Fisman ) report on the latest analysis of an ongoing controlled experiment—the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment—that seeks to identify and quantify the effects of extending health insurance coverage to a low-income adult pop…
The Oregon Experiment — Effects of Medicaid on Clinical Outcomes
BACKGROUND: Despite the imminent expansion of Medicaid coverage for low-income adults, the effects of expanding coverage are unclear. The 2008 Medicaid expansion in Oregon based on lottery drawings from a waiting list provided an opportunity to evaluate these effects. METHODS: Approximately 2 years after the lottery, we obtained data from 6387 adults who were randomly selected to be able to apply for Medicaid coverage and 5842 adults who were not…
Mortality and Access to Care among Adults after State Medicaid Expansions
BACKGROUND: Several states have expanded Medicaid eligibility for adults in the past decade, and the Affordable Care Act allows states to expand Medicaid dramatically in 2014. Yet the effect of such changes on adults' health remains unclear. We examined whether Medicaid expansions were associated with changes in mortality and other health-related measures. METHODS: We compared three states that substantially expanded adult Medicaid eligibility si…
Using social and behavioural science to support Covid-19 pandemic response
The Impact of Medicaid Expansion on Voter Participation: Evidence from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment
In 2008, a group of uninsured low-income adults in Oregon was selected by lottery for the chance to apply for Medicaid. Using this randomized design and state administrative data on voter behavior, we analyze how a Medicaid expansion affected voter turnout and registration. We find that Medicaid increased voter turnout in the November 2008 Presidential election by about 7 percent overall, with the effects concentrated in men (18 percent increase)…
Patient Cost-Sharing and Healthcare Spending Growth
In this paper, we explore the role patient incentives play in slowing healthcare spending growth. Evidence suggests that while patients do indeed respond to financial incentives, cost-sharing does not uniformly improve value; rather, cost-sharing provisions must be deliberately structured and targeted to reduce care of low marginal value. Other mechanisms may be helpful in targeting particular populations or types of utilization. The spillover ef…
Policy Watch: Trade Adjustment Assistance
This feature contains short articles on topics that are currently on the agendas of policymakers, thus illustrating the role of economic analysis in illuminating current debates. Suggestions for future columns and comments on past ones should be sent to C. Eugene Steuerle, c/o Journal of Economic Perspectives, The Urban Institute, 2100 M Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20037
Policy Watch: Trade Adjustment Assistance
This feature contains short articles on topics that are currently on the agendas of policymakers, thus illustrating the role of economic analysis in illuminating current debates. Suggestions for future columns and comments on past ones should be sent to C. Eugene Steuerle, c/o Journal of Economic Perspectives, The Urban Institute, 2100 M Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20037
The spillover effects of state spending
Extensive or Intensive Generosity? The Price and Income Effects of Federal Grants
Knowing the responsiveness of state spending to federal subsidies along different dimensions allows for the optimal design of joint federal-state programs. Welfare is an important case in point: states have the ability to choose both the extent of welfare eligibility and the intensity of benefits provided through the program. This paper estimates the sensitivity of state spending to separate federal subsidies for increasing benefits and for incre…
Risk Selection and Risk Adjustment: Improving Insurance in the Individual and Small Group Markets
Insurance market reforms face the key challenge of addressing the threat that risk selection poses to the availability of stable, high-value insurance policies that provide long-term risk protection. Many of the strategies in use today fail to address this breakdown in risk pooling, and some even exacerbate it. Flexible risk adjustment schemes are a promising avenue for promoting market stability and limiting insurer cream-skimming, potentially p…
Workplace Wellness Programs Can Generate Savings
Amid soaring health spending, there is growing interest in workplace disease prevention and wellness programs to improve health and lower costs. In a critical meta-analysis of the literature on costs and savings associated with such programs, we found that medical costs fall by about $3.27 for every dollar spent on wellness programs and that absenteeism costs fall by about $2.73 for every dollar spent. Although further exploration of the mechanis…
Patient Cost-Sharing and Healthcare Spending Growth
In this paper, we explore the role patient incentives play in slowing healthcare spending growth. Evidence suggests that while patients do indeed respond to financial incentives, cost-sharing does not uniformly improve value; rather, cost-sharing provisions must be deliberately structured and targeted to reduce care of low marginal value. Other mechanisms may be helpful in targeting particular populations or types of utilization. The spillover ef…
Mortality and Access to Care among Adults after State Medicaid Expansions
BACKGROUND: Several states have expanded Medicaid eligibility for adults in the past decade, and the Affordable Care Act allows states to expand Medicaid dramatically in 2014. Yet the effect of such changes on adults' health remains unclear. We examined whether Medicaid expansions were associated with changes in mortality and other health-related measures. METHODS: We compared three states that substantially expanded adult Medicaid eligibility si…
The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment: Evidence from the First Year
In 2008, a group of uninsured low-income adults in Oregon was selected by lottery to be given the chance to apply for Medicaid. This lottery provides an opportunity to gauge the effects of expanding access to public health insurance on the health care use, financial strain, and health of low-income adults using a randomized controlled design. In the year after random assignment, the treatment group selected by the lottery was about 25 percentage …
The Oregon Experiment — Effects of Medicaid on Clinical Outcomes
BACKGROUND: Despite the imminent expansion of Medicaid coverage for low-income adults, the effects of expanding coverage are unclear. The 2008 Medicaid expansion in Oregon based on lottery drawings from a waiting list provided an opportunity to evaluate these effects. METHODS: Approximately 2 years after the lottery, we obtained data from 6387 adults who were randomly selected to be able to apply for Medicaid coverage and 5842 adults who were not…
Medicaid Increases Emergency-Department Use: Evidence from Oregon's Health Insurance Experiment
Health Economy? The intensity of arguments over social science issues often seems inversely correlated with the quantity of experimental evidence. Taubman et al. (p. 263 , published online 2 January; see the Policy Forum by Fisman ) report on the latest analysis of an ongoing controlled experiment—the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment—that seeks to identify and quantify the effects of extending health insurance coverage to a low-income adult pop…
Short-term Outcomes for Medicare Beneficiaries After Low-acuity Visits to Emergency Departments and Clinics
BACKGROUND: There is substantial interest in identifying low-acuity visits to emergency departments (EDs) that could be treated more appropriately in other settings. Systematic differences in illness severity between ED patients and comparable patients elsewhere could make such strategies unsafe, but little evidence exists to guide policy makers. OBJECTIVE: To compare illness severity between patients visiting EDs and outpatient clinics, by compa…
Health Insurance Coverage and Health — What the Recent Evidence Tells Us
The authors report their analysis of the highest quality research over the past decade examining the effects of health insurance on health and conclude that insurance coverage increases access to care and improves health outcomes.
The Impact of Medicaid Expansion on Voter Participation: Evidence from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment
In 2008, a group of uninsured low-income adults in Oregon was selected by lottery for the chance to apply for Medicaid. Using this randomized design and state administrative data on voter behavior, we analyze how a Medicaid expansion affected voter turnout and registration. We find that Medicaid increased voter turnout in the November 2008 Presidential election by about 7 percent overall, with the effects concentrated in men (18 percent increase)…
Using social and behavioural science to support Covid-19 pandemic response
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behavior with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on nav…
Using social and behavioural science to support Covid-19 pandemic response
Do Workplace Wellness Programs Work
Addressing the COVID-19 pandemic is by far the most pressing health policy issue of the day. But
Trade-offs in Public Health Insurance Design
Rethinking Health Insurance Design
Evidence, Anecdotes, and Health Policy
Overuse and Underuse of Health Care: New Insights From Economics and Machine Learning
Rampant overuse of health care in the US is plain to see. The traditional explanation from health economics is straightforward: bad incentives. Paying physicians too much leads to more carewhether patients need it or not. But paying physicians too little risks limiting patients' access to care
Tying Innovation to Evaluation and Accountability in Programs to Address Intersecting Health and Social Needs
This JAMA Forum advocates for rigorous assessment of the effectiveness of programs and initiatives addressing health-related social needs to improve health outcomes
Medicaid, Health, and the Moderating Role of Neighborhood Characteristics
Jama Health Forum Peer Reviewers in 2022
A Different Framework to Achieve Universal Coverage in the US
This JAMA Forum discusses alternative ways to achieve universal coverage in the US such as administrative simplification in the Affordable Care Act plans to increase enrollment, having a basic policy that would be available to everyone, and options for supplemental coverage
How Much Safety Did the Social Safety Net Provide During the Covid-19 Pandemic
This JAMA Forum discusses the successes, failures, and lessons learned regarding the performance of US social safety-net programs during the COVID-19 pandemic
Healthcare Policy and Management (20 works) · Health care (17 works) · Medicine (16 works) · Business (15 works) · Economics (15 works) · Economic growth (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Health insurance (12 works) · Actuarial science (11 works) · Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life (9 works)