Can Food Stamps help to reduce Medicare spending on diabetes?
Diabetes is rapidly escalating amongst low-income, older adults at great cost to the Medicare program. We use longitudinal survey data from the Health and Retirement Study linked to administrative Medicare records and biomarker data to assess the relationship between Food Stamp receipt and diabetes health outcomes. We find no significant difference in Medicare spending, outpatient utilization, diabetes hospitalizations and blood sugar (HbA1c) levels between recipients and income-eligible non-recipients after controlling for a detailed set of covariates including individual fixed effects and measures of diabetes treatment compliance. As one-third of elderly Food Stamp recipients are currently diabetic, greater coordination between the Food Stamp, Medicare, and Medicaid programs may improve health outcomes for this group.
University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, 426 Thompson St., Ann Arbor, MI 48104, USA. lnichola@umich.edu
Lauren Hersch
LH
Nicholas
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D015415:Biomarkers; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000191:economics* / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006442:Glycated Hemoglobin / Q000032:analysis; D017048:Health Care Costs; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D006278:Medicare / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008875:Middle Aged; D016017:Odds Ratio; D010045:Outpatients / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011203:Poverty / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015995:Prevalence; D011632:Public Assistance; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012946:Social Welfare / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology
D015415:Biomarkers; D006442:Glycated Hemoglobin