The association between preventive health and outpatient spending and life expectancy by income quartile

Abstract

Background: To describe the relationship between longevity and local access to preventive healthcare at the county level. Methods: We used Medicare outpatient reimbursement data from the 2010 Dartmouth Health Atlas and longevity data from Chetty et al. (2016) to identify the cross-sectional associations between county longevity, access to outpatient care, and the quality of primary care. Results: We find that the cost of outpatient care is inversely correlated with area life expectancy for individuals in the bottom income quartile. Much of this correlation is driven by men in the bottom income quartile. We also find that disaggregating a preventive care index produces significant relationships between components of the index and longevity where none were previously found. Conclusions: These results counter prior assertions that local health costs are not associated with life expectancy. Additionally, the results also suggest that the local cost of outpatient care and the quality of that care may influence the longevity of low-income populations, especially for low-income men.