ABSTRACT Effective January 1, 2011, individual market health insurers must meet a minimum medical loss ratio (MLR) of 80%. This law aims to encourage ‘productive’ forms of competition by increasing the proportion of premium dollars spent on clinical benefits. To date, very little is known...

This paper estimates the impact of income on the body weight and clinical weight classification of elderly Americans using a natural experiment that led otherwise identical retirees to receive significantly different Social Security payments based on their year of birth. We estimate models of...

This paper investigates the impact of the macroeconomy on the health insurance coverage of Americans using panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation for 2004–2010, a period that includes the Great Recession of 2007–2009. We find that a one percentage point increase in...