To design premium subsidies in a health insurance market it is necessary to estimate consumer demand, cost, and study how different subsidy schemes affect insurers' incentives. I combine data on household-level enrollment and plan-level claims from the Californian Affordable Care Act insurance...

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 article assesses the price-negotiation role played by Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), which have been at the heart of the recent drug pricing debate. I start by collecting novel data on the net-of-rebate prices of anti-cholesterol drugs. These prices are then used to estimate a dynamic...

Adverse selection in insurance markets may lead some consumers to underinsure or too few consumers to purchase insurance relative to the socially optimal level. I study whether government intervention can mitigate both underinsurance and underenrollment due to adverse selection. I establish...

Many public programs let individuals choose between publicly provided benefits and a subsidized private alternative. We investigate the determinants of health insurance choice in Medicare--a setting with vast geographic variation in the share of individuals selecting the public option versus...

In June 2007, the South Korean government, hoping to reduce the state's share of health care costs, passed an amendment to the state-run health care system to transition from a copay system to a coinsurance system for outpatient services. This new policy effectively increased the out-of-pocket...

Proposals to create a national health care plan such as “Medicare for All” rely heavily on reducing the prices that insurers pay for health care. These changes affect physicians’ short-run incentives for care provision and may also change health care providers’ incentives to invest in...

Although President Obama and the Democratic Congress were able to pass landmark health legislation, their efforts to reform health care ran into predictable political roadblocks. In a severe recession, taxing business and labor is obviously not helpful to economic recovery. Moreover, an array of...

Despite surviving a number of threats, President Obama’s health care law remains harmful, unstable, and unpopular. It also remains vulnerable to repeal, largely because Congress and the Supreme Court have granted each state the power to veto major provisions of the law before they take effect...