Essays on Health Insurance, Household Liquidity, and the Demand for Medical Care PDF Download

Author: Matthew John Niedzwiecki
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781303220807
Category : Health insurance
Languages : en
Pages : 109

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Book Description
My dissertation uses empirical methods to investigate the determinants of medical care demand and to understand how government action affects population health. The first chapter looks at a recent health insurance expansion in the state of Massachusetts and finds that, in the short run, the newly insured seek more hospital care. In the long run, as the supply of primary care physicians expands, care may shift to more efficient points of services. The second and third chapters examine the effect of cash liquidity on the demand for medical care and health insurance. I find liquidity to play an important role in determining the timing of health investments and that the uninsured are more sensitive to liquidity constraints, likely because they face higher prices. Cash-on hand is also shown to be an important fact in maintaining continuous private health insurance coverage.

Author: Tal A. Gross
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 111

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(cont.) This paper studies the transition in insurance status as teenagers move from their family's coverage to uninsured status or other insurance plans. I find no evidence that teenagers stock up on medical care before coverage ends, but rather a general decrease in health care consumption in the last month of coverage.

Author: Madeline Reed Jones
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Health care costs are a growing concern for households with limited resources. Cost-sharing in health plans requires people to pay for health care in the form of deductibles, co-payments, and out-of-pocket expenses and is becoming more widespread. This dissertation adds to the research on the role of liquidity in health care by investigating policies that provide households with increased income. I use restricted Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data, Census Household Pulse Survey data, and a quasi-experimental methodology to investigate the relationship between liquidity and health care decision-making.The findings show that an increase in liquidity in the form of tax refunds is not associated with an increase in health care seeking for lower-income adults. There is suggestive evidence of heterogeneity in the effects of liquidity by health plan enrollment as well as for the type of care, however. Mental health care, which often is more discretionary and has large out-of-pocket costs, appears to be impacted by increased income. Additional barriers to mental health care exist including a lack of access to providers, although, this research finds legislation that allows licensed psychologists to work across state lines may lead to reductions in delays to get care. This research provides insight into the effect of liquidity and state-level policies on household decision-making. These studies are important given the rising cost-sharing and increasing reports of cost-related barriers to health care.

Author: Robin McKnight
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
This thesis brings together three essays on issues in the economics of health insurance. The first study considers the effects of average per-patient caps on Medicare reimbursement for home health care, which took effect in October 1997. I use regional variation in the restrictiveness of per-patient caps to identify the short-run effects of this reimbursement change on home health agency behavior, beneficiary health care utilization, and health status. The empirical evidence suggests that agencies responded to the caps by shifting the composition of their caseload towards healthier beneficiaries. In addition, I find that decreases in home care utilization were associated with an increase in outpatient care, and had little adverse impact on the health status of beneficiaries. In the second paper, I examine the impact of Medicare balance billing restrictions on physician behavior and on beneficiary spending. My findings include a significant decline in out-of-pocket expenditures for medical care by elderly households, but no impact on the quantity of care received or in the duration of office visits. The third paper (written with Jonathan Gruber) explores the causes of the dramatic rise in employee contributions to employer-provided health insurance over the past 20 years. We find that there was a large impact of falling tax rates, rising eligibility for insurance through the Medicaid system and through spouses, and deteriorating economic conditions (in the late 1980s and early 1990s). We also find more modest impacts of increased managed care penetration and rising health care costs. Overall, this set of factors can explain about one-quarter of the rise in employee contributions over the 1982-1996 period.

Author: Amy Finkelstein
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231538685
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Addressing the challenge of covering heath care expenses—while minimizing economic risks. Moral hazard—the tendency to change behavior when the cost of that behavior will be borne by others—is a particularly tricky question when considering health care. Kenneth J. Arrow’s seminal 1963 paper on this topic (included in this volume) was one of the first to explore the implication of moral hazard for health care, and Amy Finkelstein—recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic—here examines this issue in the context of contemporary American health care policy. Drawing on research from both the original RAND Health Insurance Experiment and her own research, including a 2008 Health Insurance Experiment in Oregon, Finkelstein presents compelling evidence that health insurance does indeed affect medical spending and encourages policy solutions that acknowledge and account for this. The volume also features commentaries and insights from other renowned economists, including an introduction by Joseph P. Newhouse that provides context for the discussion, a commentary from Jonathan Gruber that considers provider-side moral hazard, and reflections from Joseph E. Stiglitz and Kenneth J. Arrow. “Reads like a fireside chat among a group of distinguished, articulate health economists.” —Choice

Author: Alexander S. Preker
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821366203
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Private voluntary health insurance already plays an important role in the health sector of many low and middle income countries. The book reviews the context under which private insurance could contribute to an improvement in the financial sustainability of the health sector, financial protection against the costs of illness, household income smoothing, access to care, and market productivity. This volume is the third in aseries of in-depth reviews of the role of health care financing in providing access for low-income populations to needed healthcare, protecting them from the impoverishing effects of illness, and addressing the important issues of social exclusion in government financed programs.

Author: David M. Dror
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 9780821350416
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
Annotation This volume views community-based microinsurance as an incremental first step to improved financial protection and better access to health services for the poor. While community-based financing can be structured in various ways, this volume focuses on reinsurance as a mechanism for improving micro-level health insurance units. It outlines strategies and policies that can be applied by countries and donors to improve access to health care services.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dissertation abstracts
Languages : en
Pages : 776

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Author: United Nations. Department of Economic and Social Affairs
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789211091540
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Greater longevity is an indicator of human progress in general. Increased life expectancy and lower fertility rates are changing the population structure worldwide in a major way: the proportion of older persons is rapidly increasing, a process known as population ageing. The process is inevitable and is already advanced in developed countries and progressing quite rapidly in developing ones. The 2007 Survey analyses the implications of population ageing for social and economic development around the world, while recognising that it offers both challenges and opportunities. Among the most pressing issues is that arising from the prospect of a smaller labour force having to support an increasingly larger older population. Paralleling increased longevity are the changes in intergenerational relationships that may affect the provision of care and income security for older persons, particularly in developing countries where family transfers play a major role. At the same time, it is also necessary for societies to fully recognise and better harness the productive and social contributions that older persons can make but are in many instances prevented from making. The Survey argues that the challenges are not insurmountable, but that societies everywhere need to put in place the policies required to confront those challenges effectively and to ensure an adequate standard of living for each of their members, while respecting and promoting the contribution and participation of all.

Author: Pablo Enrique Gottret
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 082136586X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This overview of health financing tools, policies and trends--with a particular focus on challenges facing developing countries--provides the basis for effective policy-making. Analyzing the current global environment, the book discusses health financing goals in the context of both the underlying health, demographic, social, economic, political and demographic analytics as well as the institutional realities faced by developing countries, and assesses policy options in the context of global evidence, the international aid architecture, cross-sectoral interactions, and countries' macroeconomic frameworks and overall development plans.