Author |
Conference Paper |
Summary |
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Bansak, Cynthia
Raphael, Steven |
The Effects of State Outreach Efforts on Take up and Crowd Our Rates for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (PDF)
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Little is known about the effectiveness of state efforts to enroll children in State Children's Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP). Bansak and Raphael find that only 10 percent of income eligible children participated in SCHIP in 2001. They examine variation in participation across states as well as the substitution of public for private coverage, looking at a variety of outreach programs and measures to prevent crowd-out that have been adopted by the states. |
Project Summary |
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Blumberg, Linda
Cancian, Maria |
Do Workers Have a Choice and Sort Strategically for Employer Sponsored Insurance Offers? (PDF) |
If the labor market was in a competitive equilibrium, only workers who are not willing to forego the wages required to obtain an employer offer of health insurance would be without health insurance, i.e., having a job without health insurance would be voluntary. Because individuals do not costlessly move from labor market to labor market, however, we cannot make that claim. Blumberg and Cancian find that the extent to which workers are constrained in finding a job with the preferred mix of wages and benefits varies across markets. They also find that a substantial share of workers not offered health insurance may be constrained by the minimum wage in trading off wages and benefits. |
Project Summary |
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Bundorf, M. Kate
Pauly, Mark V. |
The Uninsured: Risk, Income, and "Affordability" of Coverage (PDF) |
Bundorf and Pauly address the assumption that high premiums make health insurance unaffordable to people with high expected medical costs. Defining health risk as expected medical costs given a person's medical condition, they find that the probability of having health insurance rises both with health risk and income. This finding is contrary to the prediction that the sickest people are priced out of the health insurance market. |
Project Summary |
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Ellis, Randall P.
Ma, Albert C. T. |
Health Insurance, Expectations, and Job Turnover (PDF) |
Smaller firms, especially those with low job-specific human capital requirements (for example, many quick service restaurants), may not need to offer health insurance to attract needed workers. In fact, not offering health insurance may help smaller firms attract relatively healthy workers. Ellis and Ma investigate this hypothesis, emphasizing the role of expectations about health costs rather than actual costs in the decision made by the smallest firms. |
Project Summary |
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Fang, Hanming
Silverman, Dan |
Beliefs About Future Health and the Demand for Health and Health Insurance (PDF) |
In general, what people expect to happen in the future shapes how they behave today. However, Fang and Silverman find that beliefs about how long one will live are only weakly associated with current health behaviors such as engaging in vigorous exercise or obtaining preventive health screenings and holding health insurance. General optimism, a measure of the degree to which people provide optimistic answers about a variety of possible future events, does show a relationship with health insurance coverage: people with more optimistic views are more likely to have health insurance. |
Project Summary |
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Hill, Steven C.
Kreider, Brent |
Health Care Utilization Patterns Among the Uninsured: What Can Be Learned from Data with Arbitrary Insurance Reporting Error? (PDF) |
Studies of the relationship between health insurance status and an array of health outcomes implicitly assume that health insurance status is accurately recorded in the dataset being used. Hill and Kreider exploit the fact that the Medical Expenditure Panel Study (MEPS) follows up on what individuals said about having health insurance through employers by contacting the employers who are reported to provide the coverage. Hill and Kreider use this validating information to calculate bounds on the true number with private health insurance status and show what happens as assumptions about truth of self-reports are relaxed. |
Project Summary |
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Lang, Kevin
Kang, Hong
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Worker Sorting, Health Insurance Coverage and Wages (PDF) |
Some employers offer health insurance with no requirement for an employee premium co-payment. Some offer it with an employee contribution requirement, and others do not offer health insurance. Lang and Kang examine how the tax treatment of health insurance affects the employer's choice. They find the employers' decisions are strongly influenced by employees' tax rates. Without favorable tax treatment, fewer employers would offer health insurance. |
Project Summary |
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Maxwell, Nan L.
Paringer, Lynn |
English Language, Skills, and Health Benefits (PDF) |
Workers with less formal education are less likely to have health insurance through an employer. There is little understanding of how skills, independent of formal education levels, influence one's chances of getting a job with health insurance. Workers whose primary language spoken at home is not English make up 20 percent of the California workforce but 40 percent of uninsured workers. Maxwell and Paringer analyze two California surveys and find English language skills bring a real advantage in obtaining health insurance. |
Project Summary |
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Monheit, Alan C.
Vistnes, Jessica Primoff |
Health Insurance Enrollment Decisions: Understanding the Role of Preferences for Coverage (PDF) |
Economists believe choices reflect preferences. The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) asked respondents a variety of questions about attitudes towards risk and health insurance; for example, do they agree or disagree with the statement that health insurance is not worth the money it costs. Monheit and Vistnes find persons without health insurance are more likely to have weak or uncertain preferences for health insurance. They use this information to consider what subsidy would be required to induce those with weak preferences to enroll in health insurance. |
Project Summary |
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Royalty, Anne Beeson
Abraham, Jean |
Health Insurance and Labor Market Outcomes: Joint Decision-Making Within Households (PDF) |
The question of how one spouse's health insurance coverage influences another spouse's labor market participation is difficult to answer satisfactorily. Many decisions are jointly made, so it is difficult to disentangle marginal causal effects of one spouse's decisions on the other's behavior. Royalty and Abraham argue that a spouse's health insurance has an effect on one's own sick leave and use paid sick leave to identify the effect of spousal health insurance. Using this instrument, they find a spouse's insurance has a negative effect on being offered health insurance by one's own employer, on working full time, and on working at a large establishment. |
Project Summary |
