There is much debate about whether the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill -- the greatest expansion of Medicare benefits since its creation in 1965 -- will improve the health of elderly Americans, and how much it will cost. We model how insurance affects medical care utilization, and subsequently, health outcomes over time in a dynamic model with correlated errors. Longitudinal individual-level data from the 1992-1998 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey provide estimates of these effects. Simulations over five years show that expanding prescription drug coverage would increase drug expenditures by between 12% and 17%. However, other health care expenditures would only increase slightly, and the mortality rate would improve.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
10964.
Length: Date of creation: Dec 2004 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10964
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Find related papers by JEL classification: I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Production I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
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Anne Case & Christina Paxson, 2004.
"Sex Differences in Morbidity and Mortality,"
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171, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Research Program in Development Studies..
[Downloadable!]
Anne Case & Christina Paxson, 2004.
"Sex Differences in Morbidity and Mortality,"
Working Papers
244, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Health and Wellbeing..
[Downloadable!]
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