the RAND working paper by Card, Dobkin and Maestas linked below examines again the extent to which medical insurance cover affects treatment intensity and health outcomes. the authors make use of the fact that cover increases sharply at age 65 as people enter a threshold for Medicare cover and find that people just above the 65 threshold receive substantially higher intensity treatment for a given illness than people just below for a given level of illness. they show some evidence that those without cover are sent out of hospital too early and are more likely to be readmitted because of this. the data doesnt seem to allow much more than examining differential readmission probabilities but these, in themselves, are useful indicators.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WR505/
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