I exploit the age-based eligibility structure of Medicare and the age gap between spouses to examine the impact of Medicare eligibility of an older spouse on the insurance coverage of younger, Medicare-ineligible spouses. Using a regression discontinuity framework, I find that Medicare...

A famous idea to maintain affordable health expenditures is to cut back statutory health insurance (SHI) to a basic insurance and to introduce supplementary private health insurance (PHI), permitted to cover the remaining benefits and to apply managed care mechanisms. The measure is supposed to...

This paper shows how in Medicare Part D insurers' gaming of the subsidy paid to low-income enrollees distorts premiums and raises the program cost. Using plan-level data from the first five years of the program, I find multiple instances of pricing strategy distortions for the largest insurers....

I take advantage of regulatory and pricing dynamics in Medicare Part D to empirically explore interactions among adverse selection, switching costs, and regulation. I first document novel evidence of adverse selection and switching costs within Part D using detailed administrative data. I then...

This paper examines the impact of health insurance expansion on medical liability costs using the case of the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) Medicaid expansion. Medicaid expansion has increased the demand for medical services, but in doing so it may also have increased physicians' liability in...

Deductibles in health insurance are often regarded as a means to contain health care costs when individuals exhibit moral hazard. However, in the absence of moral hazard, voluntarily chosen deductibles may instead lead to self-selection into different insurance contracts. We use a set of new...

The Affordable Care Act is one of the most debated and dividing pieces of legislation in recent memory. One of the main elements of the ACA is the optional expansion of Medicaid eligibility to 138\% of the federal poverty line. The current debate has focused on the direct effects of the newly...

To insure policyholders against contemporaneous health expenditure shocks and future reclassification risk, long-term health insurance constitutes an alternative to community-rated short-term contracts with an individual mandate. Relying on unique claims panel data from a large private insurer...

In 2007, the state of Andhra Pradesh in southern India began rolling out the Aarogyasri health insurance to reduce catastrophic health expenditures in households “below the poverty line.” We exploit variation in program roll-out over time and districts to evaluate the impacts of the scheme...