The effect of health insurance status on treatment intensity in heart attack patients: an IV approach

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this exercise is to determine if patients suffering from heart attacks receive different levels of treatment intensity based on insurance status, accounting for possible endogeneity between insurance status and treatment intensity. This possible endogeneity is addressed through an instrumental variables approach and results suggest that insurance status is not as impactful on treatment intensity once endogeneity is accounted for.

KEYWORDS:

• Insurance
• treatment intensity
• endogeneity
• heart attacks

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I10
• I11
• I13

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ In the sample of only 64 and 65 year olds, Age_65 was not statistically correlated with any of the variables used in the analysis except for Insurance.