Mounting evidence documents a stark correlation between income and health, yet the causal mechanisms behind this gradient are poorly understood. This paper examines the impact of access to expertise on health, and whether unequal access to expertise contributes to the health-income gradient. Our...

China's Urban and Rural Residents' Basic Medical Insurance (URRBMI) system recently was formed to integrate two prior-existing government health insurance programs for low income citizens: the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (for rural residents) and the Urban Residents' Basic Medical Insurance...

We estimate the benefit of life-extending medical treatments to life insurance companies. Our main insight is that life insurance companies have a direct benefit from such treatments as they lower the insurer's liabilities by pushing the death benefit further into the future and raise future...

This paper explores a notional defined contribution (NDC) approach aimed at helping pensioners to cope with the cost of long-term care (LTC). It develops the necessary technicalities to fully integrate an LTC benefit, graded according to the annuitant's degree of disability, into a generic NDC...

We present and empirically implement an equilibrium labor market search model where risk averse workers facing medical expenditure shocks are matched with firms making health insurance coverage decisions. Our model delivers a rich set of predictions that can account for a wide variety of...

This research uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models to examine the alignment of health insurers' efficiency measures from different perspectives. It also analyzes the linkage between efficiency measures and asset allocation as well as traditional financial ratios including medical loss...

We analyze detailed data on plan designs from the Kaiser Family Foundation Employer Health Benefits Survey for 331 firms that offered employees both a qualifying high-deductible health plan and a lower-deductible option. For an employee at these firms selecting the lower-deductible option will...

This research uses an indirect methodology to examine the effects of health insurance mergers and acquisitions by analyzing the impact of insurers' scale of operations and group affiliation status on benefits, costs, and efficiency from the perspective of various stakeholders. The analysis can...

This paper deals with life care annuities, i.e. bundled products comprising a life annuity and long-term care insurance. It aims to assess the cost of converting retirement benefit into a life care annuity with graded benefits using a pre-existing public pay-as-you-go pension scheme. With this...

Provider cost-control incentives have become an important part of the health insurance landscape in the United States. These incentives are strongest in capitated managed care organizations, especially HMOs, because such organizations are paid a fixed amount regardless of the spending they...