More money could result in fewer trips to ER, study suggests

From ABC:

Giving cash to poor people could result in fewer emergency department visits, a new study suggests.

The study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at almost 2,900 low-income people who applied for a lottery in the Boston suburb of Chelsea, Massachusetts. Nearly 1,750 of them got up to $400 per month from November 2020 to August 2021.

The researchers then looked at health records and found that those who received the money had 27% fewer visits an emergency room in the nine-month period compared with those who didn’t receive the monthly payments.