TY  - JOUR
AU  - Gruber,Jonathan
TI  - Health Insurance for Poor Women and Children in the U.S.: Lessons from the Past Decade
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5831
PY  - 1996
Y2  - November 1996
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5831
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5831.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jonathan Gruber
MIT Department of Economics
E52-355
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-8892
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: gruberj@mit.edu
M1  - published as Jonathan Gruber. "Health Insurance for Poor Women and Children in the U.S.: Lessons from the Past Decade," in James M. Poterba, editor, "Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 11" MIT Press (1997)

AB  - to low income women and children, has expanded dramatically over the past decade.  This expansion provides a `natural laboratory' for learning about the effect of public health insurance eligibility on insurance coverage, health utilization, and health outcomes.  This paper provides an overview of what has been learned about these questions from studying the expansions.  Medicaid eligibility rose steeply over the 1984-1992 period, but coverage rose much less sharply, due to limited takeup of benefits.  This is partly due to the fact that many eligibles already had private insurance coverage, and evidence suggests that a large share of new enrollees dropped their private coverage to join the program. Nevertheless, utilization of preventive care rose substantially as a result of the expansions, and there were significant improvements in health outcomes, specifically infant and child mortality.  While these mortality reductions came at significant cost to the Medicaid program, the cost per life saved was low relative to alternative uses of government funds.  These findings highlight both the potential benefits of public insurance policy and the importance of appropriately targeting scarce public health dollars.
ER  -