Women's health issues : official publication of the Jacobs Institute of Women's Health
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Womens Health Issues · May 2008
Age and gender differences in medicare expenditures and service utilization at the end of life for lung cancer decedents.
Gender and age differences in medical care are well documented. We examined age and gender differences in Medicare expenditures for lung cancer decedents in the last year of life (LYOL) through a cross-sectional study of Medicare administrative and claims data. ⋯ Our findings suggest that gender disparities in expenditures are generally small at the end of life for lung cancer decedents, particularly among the older cohorts. As expected, the bigger observed differences are by age although the direction of the association is not consistent across types of service. Higher expenditures for women on social-supportive services may reflect fewer informal supports for older women compared with men.