4 ms·

Not to be a nihilist, but 200 seems like a ridiculously and surprisingly low number for impact of such an expensive and broad program. Does it really validate w

• lavishlatern 5y ago
  Bear in mind nearly all of the people receiving letters should be <65. I quickly skimmed the paper and it seems like the authors don't have enough data to come up with a quality adjusted life-year type of statistic like the NHS uses.
• LorenPechtel 5y ago
  Note that only those influenced to buy insurance would show any possible benefit.
• robocat 5y ago
  On second thoughts, that should be 100: I stuffed up mixing households versus individuals. “The final sample consists of 4.5 million returns, corresponding to 8.9 million individuals. Individuals in the sample were randomly assigned to receive a letter (86%) or to a control group (14%). One letter, addressed to the taxpayer(s), was sent per return. Hence, randomization was conducted at the household level.” So 86% of 4.5 million households were sent a letter, and that led to a 1.3% percentage point increase in signups compared to the 14% of households that were not sent a letter. They are then saying that those 1.3% of extra signups led to saving ~700 lives. There is the risk of a selection bias because we don’t know why those extra 1.3% signed up versus those that didn’t. The actual paper uses months, since everyone dies, so zero lives can be saved in the long term.