The Value of Health Insurance during a Crisis: Effects of Medicaid Implementation on Pandemic Influenza Mortality
研究利用1965年医疗补助引入前后两次流感大流行，发现扩大公共健康保险覆盖显著降低了婴儿死亡率，且效果超出直接受益者，表明有助于减缓疾病传播。
Abstract This paper studies how better access to public health insurance affects infant mortality during pandemics. The analysis combines cross-state variation in mandated eligibility for Medicaid with two influenza pandemics that arrived shortly before and after the program’s introduction in 1965. We find that better access to public health insurance in high-eligibility states substantially reduced pandemic infant mortality. The reductions in pandemic infant mortality are too large to be attributable solely to new Medicaid recipients, suggesting that expanded access to public health insurance helped mitigate disease transmission among the broader population.