Racial Difference in the Use of VA Health Services

Chichun Fang, Kenneth Langa, Helen Levy and David Weir
Additional contact information
Chichun Fang: University of Michigan
Kenneth Langa: University of Michigan
Helen Levy: University of Michigan
David Weir: University of Michigan

Working Papers from University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center

Abstract: We study the factors that affect the utilization of health care services administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and its racial differences. Due to data limitation, previous research in this regard mostly only focuses on veterans who are VA users or at least eligible for VA services. We fill in the gap in literature with a random sample of veterans 51 and older from the Health and Retirement Study. We find that, among all veterans, those who are black and less healthy are more likely to use VA health services. These factors, nevertheless, are no longer statistically significant after the sample is restricted to veterans who are eligible for VA services. We also find that VA health services and services provided through other channels are at least partial substitutes: VA usage drops when a veteran becomes age eligible for Medicare or when a veteran has health insurance coverage through employment. This drop in usage holds not only among all veterans, but also among veterans eligible for VA services. Finally, perception about the quality of services delivered in VA versus non-VA facilities strongly predicts VA services usage. Those who have favorable views toward VA use VA services more, and the results from variance decomposition suggests a majority part of the racial difference in VA usage can be attributed to the racial difference in such perception.

Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2015-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-hea and nep-ias
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://mrdrc.isr.umich.edu/publications/Papers/pdf/wp334.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (http://mrdrc.isr.umich.edu/publications/Papers/pdf/wp334.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://mrdrc.isr.umich.edu/publications/Papers/pdf/wp334.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mrr:papers:wp334

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center P.O. Box 1248, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MRRC Administrator ().