Insurance – The Largest Health Policy Study Ever | Harvard Researcher Joseph Newhouse

Today's guest, Dr. Joseph Newhouse, is a longtime Harvard professor whose research has shaped U.S. health policy for decades. He is best known for leading the RAND Health Insurance Experiment, the largest study ever conducted on health insurance and cost-sharing.In this episode, we explore the story behind the RAND experiment - how it came to be, the challenges it faced, and what its findings revealed about how patients respond to cost-sharing. Dr. Newhouse explains why more care doesn’t always mean better health, and why outcomes varied so sharply for low-income patients with chronic conditions. We also discuss how RAND’s lessons still influence today’s debates over Medicaid, Medicare, and employer insurance, and where he thinks the study’s findings hold true. Finally, Dr. Newhouse reflects on what he might change if the experiment were run today, including how Medicare and value-based insurance design could be studied in new ways.