Medicare has recently experienced the largest expansion of benefits since its in-ception: the
inclusion of prescription drug coverage under the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement
and Modernization Act of 2003. The policy debate has mainly focused on estimating the cost
of implementing the new benefit, with little attention to the quantification of its impact on
beneficiaries' life expectancy, health status, and health-related behaviors. The policy came
into effect in January 2006; therefore, no post-policy data are available yet. This paper …