Response to McWilliams Commentary
"Assessing the Health Effects of Medicare Coverage for Previously Uninsured Adults: a Matter of Life and Death?"
Published in: HSR, Health Services Research, v. 45, no. 5, pt. 1, Oct. 2010, p. 1423-1429
Posted on RAND.org on January 01, 2010
This commentary responds to previously published analysis, which concluded that (based on Health retirement Survey [HRS] data), seniors who were previously uninsured but then become eligible for Medicare have attenuated risk of death relative to seniors who were previously insured. This commentary disagrees with the previous analysis and concludes that the HRS does not provide sufficient evidence that the population health trajectory of the previously uninsured is significantly altered by the acquisition of Medicare coverage at age 65.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation External publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.