We study the effects of losing insurance on behavioral health – mental health and substance use disorder (SUD) – community hospitalizations. We leverage variation in public insurance eligibility offered by a large-scale Medicaid disenrollment. Losing insurance decreased SUD-related...

This paper examines the impact of universal, free, and easily accessible primary healthcare on population health as measured by age-specific birth and mortality rates, focusing on a nationwide socialized medicine program implemented in Turkey. The Family Medicine Program (FMP), launched in 2005,...

This study investigates whether minimum wage increases in the United States affect an important non-market outcome: worker health. To study this question, we use data on lesser-skilled workers from the 1993-2014 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Surveys coupled with differences-in-differences...

We examine how substance use disorder (SUD) treatment providers respond to private health insurance expansions induced by state equal coverage ('parity') laws for SUD treatment. We use data on the near universe of specialty SUD treatment providers in the United States between 1997 and 2010 in an...

In this study we examine the impact of a value-based insurance design (V-BID) program implemented between 2010 and 2013 at a large public employer in the state of Oregon. The program substantially increased cost-sharing, specifically copayments and coinsurance, for several healthcare services...

Each year, 10,000 individuals die in alcohol-impaired traffic accidents in the United States, while psychoactive drugs are involved in 20% of all fatal traffic accidents. We investigate whether state parity laws for substance use disorder (SUD) treatment have the unintended benefit of reducing...

We examine the early effects of U.S. state Medicaid expansions under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on substance use disorder (SUD) treatment utilization. We couple administrative data on admissions to specialty SUD treatment and prescriptions for medications used to treat SUDs in outpatient...

In this paper, we study the effect on cesarean rates of a policy change in Chile that decreased the cost of delivery at private hospitals for women with public health insurance. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) approach based on the eligibility conditions for this benefit, we find that in...

We use a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) to evaluate the impact of cost-sharing on the use of health services. In the Italian health system, individuals reaching age 65 and earning low incomes are given total exemption from cost-sharing for health services consumption. Since the...

Social protection systems in developing countries are typically composed of a bundle of benefits, the major ones being health insurance and pensions. Benefit bundling may increase informality and decrease welfare. Indeed, if some of the benefits are valued at substantially less than their cost,...