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The COVID-19 pandemic increased the rate of mental health disorders, as well as demand for mental health services. It remains unclear, however, the extent to which it impacted access to mental health care. Using data from an audit field experiment, which ran from January to May 2020 and overlapped with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we examine the impact of COVID-19 on access to mental health care appointments in the United States. We find that increased intensity of COVID-19–measured by daily cases, daily fatalities, and weekly excess deaths–is associated with decreased access to mental health care appointments.
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Reconciling Seemingly Contradictory Results from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment and the Massachusetts Health Reform
A headline result from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment is that emergency room (ER) utilization increased. A seemingly contradictory result from the Massachusetts health reform is that ER utilization decreased. I reconcile both results by identifying treatment effect heterogeneity within the Oregon experiment and extrapolating it to Massachusetts. Even though Oregon compliers increased their ER utilization, they were adversely selected relative to Oregon never takers, who would have decreased their ER utilization. Massachusetts expanded coverage from a higher level to healthier compliers. Therefore, Massachusetts compliers are comparable to a subset of Oregon never takers, which can reconcile the results.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1350132
- PAR ID:
- 10484761
- Publisher / Repository:
- MIT Press Direct
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Review of Economics and Statistics
- Volume:
- 105
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0034-6535
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 646 to 664
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01069
