Date and Time
April 27, 2005
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM

Availability
Open to the public
No RSVP required

Speaker
Will Dow, PhD - Professor of Health Economics at University of California-Berkeley

The causal role of health insurance in improving health is still poorly understood. For this Research in Progress Seminar, the speaker will discuss his research investigating the effects of Medicare on mortality as it was introduced among elderly Americans in 1966. The investigators used information on variation in health insurance coverage across age, time and space in the United States to produce a range of estimates of the mortality effects. They then contrast changing U.S. mortality patterns with those in a set of 12 comparison countries. Findings from most of the comparisons support the hypothesis that Medicare lowered mortality among elderly Americans after 1966, but the magnitude of this effect varies substantially by comparisons of group and country.