Barriers to Enrollment in Health Insurance Programs

Last registered on June 23, 2021

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Barriers to Enrollment in Health Insurance Programs
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0000234
Initial registration date
January 31, 2014

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
January 31, 2014, 1:26 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
June 23, 2021, 4:55 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Williams College

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
University of Michigan
PI Affiliation
National University of Singapore

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2014-02-07
End date
2014-08-31
Secondary IDs
NIH 1R21HD071361-01A1
Abstract
This study aims to explore barriers to enrollment in health insurance programs – the health insurance exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid - and to assess the efficacy of several interventions in raising participation rates. This project will use a mail-based randomized field experiment to evaluate the importance of several likely barriers to take-up - imperfect information, transaction costs, and behavioral biases such as limited attention and procrastination
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Beam, Emily, Tara Watson and Dean Yang. 2021. "Barriers to Enrollment in Health Insurance Programs ." AEA RCT Registry. June 23. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.234-1.1
Former Citation
Beam, Emily, Tara Watson and Dean Yang. 2021. "Barriers to Enrollment in Health Insurance Programs ." AEA RCT Registry. June 23. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/234/history/94364
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
See attached document.
Intervention Start Date
2014-02-07
Intervention End Date
2014-05-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
health insurance enrollment
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Mail based field experiment examining the impact of information, gift cards with a short fuse, and salience.
Experimental Design Details
Please see attached.
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by computer. See attached document for more details.
Randomization Unit
Census blocks, aggregated to at least 25 households when necessary.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
924 adjusted Census blocks.
Sample size: planned number of observations
37,663 household addresses
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Target 2000 in each information treatment (A1, A2) and each salience treatment (C1, C2), and 1250 in each gift card treatment (B1, B2). Randomization process will mean some deviation from these targets.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Williams College IRB
IRB Approval Date
2014-01-16
IRB Approval Number
N/A
Analysis Plan

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Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials