Barriers to Enrollment in Health Insurance Programs

Last registered on June 23, 2021

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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

Country

United States of America

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Tara Watson

Affiliation

Williams College

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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Dean Yang

PI Affiliation

University of Michigan

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Emily Beam

PI Affiliation

National University of Singapore

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

Completed

Start date

2014-02-07

End date

2014-08-31

Keywords

Health

Additional Keywords

Medicaid, insurance, behavioral

JEL code(s)

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

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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

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)

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB