We study age-rating restrictions in the health insurance marketplaces introduced by the Affordable Care Act. Because most buyers are subsidized, although age-rating restrictions affect pre-subsidy premiums, participation is primarily driven by subsidy generosity rather than pricing decisions....

This Essay examines the very fragile nature of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's (ACA) approach to near-universal health insurance coverage, as accentuated by a variety of implementation hurdles and challenges. The ACA's vision for expanding insurance coverage was to build on our...

This study contributes to the literature on supply-side adjustments to insurance expansions by examining the effect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on ambulance response times. Exploiting temporal and geographic variation in the implementation of the ACA as well as pre-treatment differences in...

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...

Expanding insurance coverage could, by insulating patients from having to pay full cost, encourage the utilization of arguably unnecessary medical services. It could also eliminate (or at least diminish) the need for emergency services through increasing access to preventive care. Using publicly...

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...

In the early 1990s, several U.S. states enacted community rating regulations to equalize the health insurance premiums paid by the healthy and the sick. Consistent with severe adverse selection pressures, their private coverage rates fell by around 8 percentage points more than rates in...

Public health insurance is increasingly provided indirectly by private health insurers receiving government subsidies. Previous models find that these subsidies can cause insurers to distort benefits towards services that attract profitable individuals and conversely to provide less favorable...

We use difference-in-difference methods and data from the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation to test whether the ACA dependent care provision is associated with family structure and public program participation among young adults. Findings indicate that implementation of the...

The trade war initiated by the Trump administration is the largest since the US imposed the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in the 1930s and was still raging when he left office. We analyze how the trade war impacted the 2020 US Presidential election. Our results highlight the political salience of the...