"Consumer-Directed" Health Plans (CDHPs) combine high deductibles with personal medical accounts and are intended to reduce health care spending through greater patient cost sharing. Prior research shows that CDHPs reduce spending in the first year. However, there is little research on the...

We analyze the incidence of public-employee health benefits. Because these benefits are negotiated through the political process, relevant labor market institutions deviate significantly from the competitive, private-sector benchmark. Empirically, we find that roughly 15 percent of the cost of...

This paper uses the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate to examine how the cost of employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) is shared among workers with varying medical expenditures at the individual level. The mandate provides identification because ESI is experience rated. To minimize...

Current tax law prevents workers from trading pre-tax employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) premiums for greater after-tax take-home income. Many workers thus may pay for health plans that are more expensive or have different features from plans they would directly choose for themselves. The tax...

In the United States, two patients with the same medical condition can receive drastically different treatments. In addition, the same patient can walk into two physicians’ offices and receive equally disparate treatments. This chapter attempts to understand why. It focuses on three areas: the...