Even as the number of children with health insurance has increased, coverage transitions—movement into and out of coverage and between public and private insurance—have become more common. Using data from 1996 to 2005, we examine whether insurance instability has implications for access to...

Historically, low Medicaid reimbursement rates have limited the willingness of health care providers to accept Medicaid patients, leading to access problems in many communities. This problem has been especially acute in the case of dental care. We combine data from several sources to examine the...

Do urban hospital closures affect health care access or health outcomes? We study closures in Los Angeles County between 1997 and 2003, through their effect on distance to the nearest hospital. We find that increased distance to the nearest hospital shifts regular care away from emergency rooms...

The regulation of health insurance is an important and often controversial issue. Rules intended to improve access to insurance for high-risk consumers have the potential to reduce overall coverage by inducing adverse selection. This paper examines the issue of adverse selection in the context...

In the US, tax code nondiscrimination rules and other institutional constraints require employers to offer the same fringe benefits to all full-time workers, but allow them to deny benefits to part-time workers. As a result, firms that offer generous fringe benefits to higher skill workers have...

The central role that employers play in financing health care is a distinctive feature of the U.S. health care system, and the provision of health insurance through the workplace has important implications well beyond its role as source of health care financing. In this paper, we consider the...

This study analyzes health plan choices of retirees in an employer-sponsored health benefits program that resembles "premium support" models proposed for Medicare. In this program, out-of-pocket premiums depend on when an individual retired and his or her years of service as of that date. Since...