This paper examines the role of price in health insurance coverage decisions within the family to guide policy in promoting whole family coverage. We analyze the factors that affect individual health insurance coverage among families, and explore family decisions about whom to cover and whom to...

Small firms that offer health insurance to their employees may face variable premiums if the firm hires an employee with high-expected health costs. To avoid expensive premium variability, a small firm may attempt to maintain a workforce with low expected health costs. In addition, workers with...

Objective. To estimate the effect of changes in premiums for individual insurance on decisions to purchase individual insurance and how this price response varies among subgroups of the population.Data Source. Survey responses from the Current Population Survey...

Objectives: To describe the variation in practice structure, financial arrangements, and utilization and quality management systems for eye care practices with managed care contracts. Study Design: Cross-sectional survey of 88 group and 56 solo eye care practices that contract with 6 health...

Objective: To assess utilization of ambulatory visits to primary care physicians (PCPs) and to specialists in 2 different managed care models: a closed panel gatekeeper health maintenance organization (HMO) and an open panel point-of-service HMO. Study Design: Retrospective study of patients...

American insurers are designing products to contain healthcare costs by making consumers financially responsible for their choices. Little is known about how consumers will view these new designs. Our objective is to examine consumer preferences for selected benefit designs.Methods: We used the...

Small firms that offer health insurance to their employees may face variable premiums if the firm hires an employee with high-expected health costs. To avoid expensive premium variability, a small firm may attempt to maintain a workforce with low-expected health costs. In addition, workers with...

Objective. To evaluate the role of health plan benefit design and price on consumers' decisions to purchase health insurance in the nongroup market and their choice of plan.Data Sources and Study Setting. Administrative data from the three largest nongroup insurers in California and survey data...