American Economic Review Vol. 105 No. 3 2015
The War on Poverty's Experiment in Public Medicine: Community Health Centers and the Mortality of Older Americans
open access
Abstract
This paper uses the rollout of the first Community Health Centers (CHCs) to study the longer-term health effects of increasing access to primary care. Within ten years, CHCs are associated with a reduction in age-adjusted mortality rates of 2 percent among those 50 and older. The implied 7 to 13 percent decrease in one-year mortality risk among beneficiaries amounts to 20 to 40 percent of the 1966 poor/non-poor mortality gap for this age group. Large effects for those 65 and older suggest that increased access to primary care has longer-term benefits, even for populations with near universal health insurance.
- DOI
- 10.1257/aer.20120070
- Volume
- 105
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 1067-1104
- Language
- en
- Sources
- openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref