The impact of SCHIP on insurance coverage of children.
In this paper we use the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey between 1996 and 2002 to investigate the impact of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) on insurance coverage for children. We explore a range of alternative estimation strategies, including instrumental variables and difference-in-trends models. We find that SCHIP had a significant impact in decreasing uninsurance and increasing public insurance for both children targeted by SCHIP and those eligible for Medicaid. With respect to changes in private coverage our results are less conclusive: some specifications resulted in no significant effect of SCHIP on private insurance coverage, while others showed significant decreases in private insurance. Associated estimates of SCHIP crowd-out had wide confidence intervals and were sensitive to estimation strategy.
Hudson
Julie L
JL
Division of Modeling and Simulation, Center for Financing, Access and Cost Trends, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD 20850, USA. JHudson@ahrq.gov
Selden
Thomas M
TM
Banthin
Jessica S
JS
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002662:Child Health Services / Q000191:economics*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004608:Eligibility Determination; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D017057:Medically Uninsured; D017059:Models, Econometric; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013221:State Health Plans / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000639:trends; D014481:United States