To explore how well the safety net performs at eliminating differences in diagnosis and treatment of insured and uninsured women with breast cancer, we compared insured and uninsured women treated in a safety net setting. Controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, uninsured women are more...

This paper investigates the impact of Medicare HMO penetration on the medical care expenditures incurred by Medicare fee-for-service enrollees. We find that increasing penetration leads to reduced health care spending on fee-for-service beneficiaries. In particular, a one percentage point...

Patient cost-sharing for primary care and prescription drugs is designed to reduce the prevalence of moral hazard in medical utilization. Yet the success of this strategy depends on two factors: the elasticity of demand for those medical goods, and the risk of downstream hospitalizations by...

Basic economic theory suggests that health insurance coverage may cause a reduction in prevention activities, but empirical studies have yet to provide much evidence to support this prediction. However, in other insurance contexts that involve adverse health events, evidence of ex ante moral...

Theoretical models predict asymmetric information in health insurance markets may generate inefficient outcomes due to adverse selection and moral hazard. However, previous empirical research has found it difficult to disentangle adverse selection from moral hazard in health care. We empirically...

Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) subsidize out-of-pocket health expenses not covered by employer-provided health insurance, making health care cheaper ex post, but also reducing the incentive to insure. We use a cross section of .rm-level data to show that FSAs are indeed associated with...

This paper examines one of the possible factors which has contributed to the significant recent growth in the Social Security Administration's Disability Insurance program: that of health care incentives under the program. The examination of health care incentives involves a 2-period, 2-state...

The cost of efforts to expand health insurance coverage to the currently uninsured increases when people who would otherwise purchase private insurance obtain subsidized public coverage. Legislators are increasingly interested in mechanisms that target insurance benefits to those who need them...

This paper examines the economic rationale of affordability exemptions in the context of a health insurance mandate. On its face, an affordability exemption makes little sense-- it exempts people from purchasing a good that policymakers believe benefits them. I provide an economic definition of...

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...