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Journal Article
Cash, check or third party?
Prescription benefit plans are squeezing retail pharmacies.
Working Paper
Health insurance and precautionary saving
Working Paper
Our money or your life : indemnities vs. deductibles in health insurance
When the value of a medical treatment differs across individuals, it may be socially beneficial to treat some, but not all, patients. If individuals are ignorant of their health status ex ante, they should be willing to purchase insurance fully covering treatments for high-benefit patients (Hs) and denying treatment for low-benefit patients (Ls). But if prognoses are observable but not verifiable, insurers may have trouble denying care to Ls. Deductibles force Ls to reveal their status by imposing a marginal cost on treatment, but at a price of incomplete risk-sharing. Lump-sum indemnities ...
Journal Article
The uneven distribution of health insurance
Working Paper
Estimates of the effect of FAS 106 on corporate earnings
Working Paper
The effect of an employer health insurance mandate on health insurance coverage and the demand for labor: evidence from Hawaii
Over the past few decades, policy makers have considered employer mandates as a strategy for stemming the tide of declining health insurance coverage. In this paper we examine the long term effects of the only employer health insurance mandate that has ever been enforced in the United States, Hawaii's Prepaid Health Care Act, using a standard supply-demand framework and Current Population Survey data covering the years 1979 to 2005. During this period, the coverage gap between Hawaii and other states increased, as did real health insurance costs, implying a rising burden of the mandate on ...
Journal Article
Legislative update : The mixed bag of Medicare drug coverage
Working Paper
Union Effects on Health Insurance Provision and Coverage in the United States
Since Freeman and Medoff’s (1984) comprehensive review of what unions do, union density in the U.S. has fallen substantially. During the same period, employer provision of health insurance has undergone substantial changes in extent and form. Using individual data from various supplements to the Current Population Survey and establishment data from the 1993 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation survey, we investigate the effects of unionization on employer provision of health benefits. We find that in addition to increasing coverage by employer-provided health benefits, unions reduce employee cost ...