TY  - JOUR
AU  - Khan,Nasreen
AU  - Kaestner,Robert
AU  - Lin,Swu Jane
TI  - Prescription Drug Insurance and Its Effect on Utilization and Health of the Elderly
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12848
PY  - 2007
Y2  - January 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12848
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12848.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Nasreen Khan
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
E-Mail: nkhan@salud.unm.edu

Robert Kaestner
Institute of Government and Public Affairs
University of Illinois
815 West Van Buren Street, Suite 525
Chicago, IL  60607
Tel: 312/996-8227
E-Mail: kaestner.robert@gmail.com

Swu Jane Lin
College of Pharmacy
Department of Pharmacy Administration
University of Illinois at Chicago
Chicago, IL 60612
E-Mail: Slin5@uic.edu
AB  - The Medicare Modernization Act was recently established, to provide limited drug coverage to the elderly. However, there is limited evidence on how drug coverage might affect health. The goal of this paper is to obtain “causal effects” of prescription drug coverage on drug use, use of other medical services and health of the elderly. We use fixed-effects analysis to control for unmeasured person-specific effects that may confound the relationships of interest. Results show prescription drug coverage, particularly public coverage, significantly increased the utilization of prescription drugs, but had no discernable effect on hospital admissions or health.
ER  -