Search Results
Working Paper
Why state medicaid costs vary: a first look
This study will begin by reviewing why governments have a role in providing ,health care for their citizens. The following sections will explain why the Medicaid program has become a substantial burden for many state governments and why that burden is likely to increase. The~study will then examine why some states? Medicaid expenditures are well above average and will outline some choices that policymakers may be forced to consider in the immediate future.
Journal Article
Economists weigh all the costs of health care
In evaluating health-care plans, economists look for the not-so-obvious costs, such as those related to adverse side effects, patients' lost productivity and even volunteers' time.
Journal Article
Gasping over GASB
Post-retirement health benefits could bring a shock to governments, retirees
Report
What do we really know about trends in outpatient medical expenditures for children, 1977-1987?
This analysis of outpatient medical expenditures for children identifies which children experience a relative decline in medical expenditures between 1977 and 1987. The paper also evaluates some standard methodologies used in medical demand estimation. Our semiparametic approach models expenditures simultaneously with the choice of insurance plan and the decision to incur any expenditures. Children in poor families and Hispanic children witness a decline in expenditures relative to other children. Children on Medicaid and black children experience stable expenditures over time. These results ...
Briefing
Small employers and expanded health insurance coverage
New England states have been national leaders in developing and enacting health insurance programs. But as the new laws play out on real ground, various constituencies are seeing real or perceived devils in the detail of the expansion laws. For one group in particular?small employers?efforts to extend coverage have become a two-edged sword.
Working Paper
The effect of health insurance on married female labor supply
We investigate the effects of employer-provided health insurance on the labor supply of married women. Because health benefits commonly are restricted to full-time workers, wives who prefer to work short hours but have no alternate source of insurance may work long hours in order to acquire coverage for their families. We use data from the April 1993 Current Population Survey Benefits Supplement, and we exploit variation in coverage under husbands' health plans to estimate the magnitude of this effect. Our reduced-form labor supply models indicate a strong negative effect of husbands' ...
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
No free aspirin?
Journal Article
The uneven distribution of health insurance