TY - JOUR T1 - Can Food Stamps help to reduce Medicare spending on diabetes? JF - Econ Hum Biol Y1 - 2011 A1 - Lauren Hersch Nicholas KW - Aged KW - Aged, 80 and over KW - Biomarkers KW - Confidence Intervals KW - Cross-Sectional Studies KW - Diabetes Mellitus KW - Female KW - Glycated Hemoglobin KW - Health Care Costs KW - Humans KW - Longitudinal Studies KW - Male KW - Medicare KW - Middle Aged KW - Odds Ratio KW - Outpatients KW - Poverty KW - Prevalence KW - Public Assistance KW - Regression Analysis KW - Social Welfare KW - Treatment Outcome KW - United States AB -

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.

PB - 9 VL - 9 IS - 1 U1 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21112260?dopt=Abstract U2 - PMC3032985 U4 - Diabetes/Food Stamps/biomarker data/elderly/Medicare spending/HbA1c/Public Policy ER -