title: Socialized medicine and mortality.
abstract: Over the last century life expectancy has increased substantially and so has the share of health care expenditures financed by governments. In cross-country comparisons, the US, which has the lowest government health expenditure share, often has the poorest health outcomes. Is there a plausible connection between health outcomes and government financing of health care? This paper addresses this question with panel data from 20 developed countries from 1950 to 2010. I review the history of government involvement in health care financing over this period. Then I use panel regression methods to examine whether a variety of mortality based outcome measures are correlated with the extent of government involvement. The answers are robustly negative.
authors.affiliation: Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, 5807 S Woodlawn Ave, Chicago, IL , 60637, USA, samp@uchicago.edu.
authors.forename: Sam
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Peltzman
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000191:economics; D005260:Female; D005380:Financing, Government / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014943:Global Health / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005102:Health Expenditures / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008017:Life Expectancy; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009026:Mortality; D013222:State Medicine; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D055815:Young Adult