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...

Life expectancy in the United States fares poorly in international comparisons, primarily because of high mortality rates above age 50. Its low ranking is often blamed on a poor performance by the health care system rather than on behavioral or social factors. This paper presents evidence on the...

We investigate the effect of universal health insurance on health outcome and the use of health services by exploiting a natural experiment that changes the insurance status of most Americans at age 65; that is, eligibility for the U.S. Medicare program. We compare inequalities in health and...