Does Medicare Coverage Improve Cancer Detection and Mortality Outcomes? / Rebecca Mary Myerson, Reginald Tucker-Seeley, Dana Goldman, Darius N. Lakdawalla.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Myerson, Rebecca Mary.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Tucker-Seeley, Reginald.

Goldman, Dana.

Lakdawalla, Darius N.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w26292.

NBER working paper series no. w26292

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.

Summary:

Medicare is a large government health insurance program in the United States which covers about 60 million people. This paper analyzes the effects of Medicare insurance on health for a group of people in urgent need of medical care: people with cancer. We used a regression discontinuity design to assess impacts of near-universal Medicare insurance at age 65 on cancer detection and outcomes, using population-based cancer registries and vital statistics data. Our analysis focused on the three tumor sites for which screening is recommended both before and after age 65: breast, colorectal, and lung cancer. At age 65, cancer detection increased by 72 per 100,000 population among women and 33 per 100,000 population among men; cancer mortality also decreased by 9 per 100,000 population for women but did not significantly change for men. In a placebo check, we found no comparable changes at age 65 in Canada. This study provides the first evidence to our knowledge that near-universal access to Medicare at age 65 is associated with improvements in population-level cancer mortality and provides new evidence on the differences in the impact of health insurance by gender.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2019.