Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
I am currently attending the American Economic Association (AEA) Annual Meeting in Chicago. The Presidential Address was given by Bengt Holmstrom (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) on “The Nature of Liquidity Provision: When Ignorance is Bliss.” Although there are numerous presentations on health care, such as the Health Insurance and Health Care Practice seminar lead by…
A RAND HIE for Medicaid? “In 2008, a group of uninsured low-income adults in Oregon was selected by lottery to be given the chance to apply for Medicaid…In the year after random assignment, the treatment group selected by the lottery was about 25 percentage points more likely to have insurance than the control group that…
In early 2008, Oregon expanded it’s Medicaid eligibility. To take advantage of these new benefits, 85,000 individuals signed up. Oregon’s budget, however, only had enough money to fund Medicaid coverage for 30,000. In a researcher’s dream case, Oregon decided to select the 30,000 eligible to apply for coverage using random assignment. Because this policy in…
From the N.Y. Times: Esther Duflo, a development economist at M.I.T., has been awarded the John Bates Clark Medal. The award is given to “that American economist under the age of 40 who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.” Professor Duflo, 37, helped found the Abdul Latif…
Most economists begin to learn about health insurance market with the classic models developed by Rothschild and Stiglitz. In these models, individual risk and characteristics are measured along a single dimension. Insurance contracts pay a lump sum amount in the case of a loss. In the real world of health insurance, however, things are more…
The Economist magazine has a listing of the eight up-and-coming economists. Below is a list of their names and some commentary if applicable. Amy Finkelstein. Dr. Finkelstein researches in the public and health economics fields. I have featured here work multiple times on this blog (see here, here, here, here and here). Jesse Shapiro. I…
Are marginal utilities higher when you are sick or when you are healthy? What this question basically asks is whether or not you enjoy having more income when you are healthy or when you are sick. On the one hand, when you are healthy, you may value expensive items (e.g., travel, flat screen tv, sports…
Gruber (1994) shows that the costs of employer-provided health insurance benefits are passed on to employees through lower wages. But do employees with higher expected medical expenses have their wages reduced by a higher amount to reflect the additional medical costs to employers? This may not be the case if employers can not observe the…
Adverse selection is often seen as a major impediment to the efficient functioning of insurance markets. Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976) create a model where high risk people buy full insurance while low risk individuals buy partial insurance. Yet empirically, one finds that in some insurance markets, low risk individuals purchase more insurance than high risk…
One session of the European Science Days summer school involved a presentation on long-term care (LTC) from Volker Meier. The main question is why is there so little demand for LTC insurance in the United States as well as in other countries? Below are some explanations as to why the LTC insurance market is so…