Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
That is the topic of a paper by Katherine Wagner (2022). The paper won the 2025 American Economic Journal: Economic Policy best papers award (despite being published 3 years ago). In her paper, Dr. Wagner uses data from 20 US Atlantic and Gulf Coast states between 2001 and 2017. Housing valuation data come from Zillow…
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released projections of US health insurance levels between 2024 and 2034. In the Hale et al. (2024) study, CBO estimates that: …92.3 percent of the US population, or 316 million people, have coverage in 2024, and 7.7 percent, or 26 million, are uninsured. The uninsured share of the population…
As reported based on a N.Y. Times/KFF survey: A majority of Americans with health insurance said they had encountered obstacles to coverage, including denied medical care, higher bills and a dearth of doctors in their plans… About 40 percent of those surveyed said they had delayed or gone without care in the last year because…
Health insurance companies are not spending as much money as expected. While COVID-19-related costs are up, the cost savings from people foregoing or delaying elective care has more than offset the COVID costs. Health insurers are refunding much of that savings to their enrollees. However, this is due to a provision of the ACA that…
A number of states have re-insurance programs to support the Affordable Care Act (i.e., Obamacare) marketplaces in the individual and small group markets. Re-insurance occurs when the state offers to pay a percentage of patient costs if they exceed some threshold. This may lead you to ask a number of reasonable questions. For instance: Why…
When new bills pass in Congress or state legislatures that expand health insurance coverage, most researcher look at the demand side effect. How does the insurance expansion affect the number uninsured? How does it affect access to care? How does it affect out of pocket cost? What is less frequently studied is the supply side…
On this Labor Day, I want to address a fundamental question in the U.S. health care system: should employers provide health insurance to their workers? I won’t take a stand on the issue but I will just list some pros and cons. Wherever you stand on the issue, I recommend you carefully consider the arguments…
Are high deductible health plans a good thing? Republicans typically argue yes as they say that increased cost sharing reduces moral hazard. That is, when people have to pay for medical care out of pocket, they don’t ask for unnecessary care or use care more frugally. Democrats typically argue that increased cost sharing reduces demand…
Step therapy is good in theory, but often not in practice. In step therapy, patients are required to try one drug first–typically a low cost and/or high-value treatment–before moving on to more expensive alternatives. In theory, this is a great idea. The first drug patients should try should be the highest value one. In practice, however,…
The answer is yes and no. According to a study Holahan, Karpman, and Zuckerman (2016), the health insurance exchange plans are good at insuring individuals against financial losses, but not everyone is happy with the care they are receiving. Low- and moderate-income adults with Marketplace coverage are no more likely to report problems paying medical…