[PDF] Is Health Insurance Crippling The Labor Market eBook

Author : Mark V. Pauly
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 12,24 MB
Release : 1999-06-04
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780472086443

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Who really pays for health benefits? An accessible explanation of the economic theory behind this question

Author : David M. Cutler
Publisher :
Page : 56 pages
File Size : 19,55 MB
Release : 1996
Category : Employee fringe benefits
ISBN :

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Increases in the cost of providing health insurance must have some effect on labor markets, either in lower wages, changes in the composition of employment, or both. Despite a presumption that most of this effect will be in the form of lower wages, we document in this paper a significant effect on work hours as well. Using data from the CPS and the SIPP, we show that rising health insurance costs over the 1980s increased the hours worked of those with health insurance by up to 3 percent. We argue that this occurs because health insurance is a fixed cost, and as it becomes more expensive to provide, firms face an incentive to substitute hours per worker for the number of workers employed.

Author : Katherine Baicker
Publisher :
Page : 28 pages
File Size : 50,88 MB
Release : 2005
Category : Health insurance
ISBN :

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Since 2000, premiums for employer-provided health insurance have increased by 59 percent with little corresponding increase in the generosity of coverage. The effect of this increase in costs on wages and employment will depend on workers' valuation of the benefit, the elasticities of labor supply and demand, and institutional constraints on employers' ability to lower wages. Measuring these effects is difficult, however, without a source of exogenous variation in the cost of benefits. We use variation in medical malpractice payments driven by the recent "medical malpractice crisis" to identify the causal effect of rising health insurance premiums on wages, employment, and health insurance coverage. We estimate that a 10 percent increase in health insurance premiums reduces the aggregate probability of being employed by 1.6 percent and hours worked by 1 percent, and increases the likelihood that a worker is employed only part-time by 1.9 percent. For workers covered by employer provided health insurance, this increase in premiums results in an offsetting decrease in wages of 2.3 percent. Thus, rising health insurance premiums may both increase the ranks of the unemployed and place an increasing burden on workers through decreased wages for workers with employer health insurance and decreased hours for workers moved from full time jobs with benefits to part time jobs without.

Author : Janet Holtzblatt
Publisher : DIANE Publishing
Page : 8 pages
File Size : 10,8 MB
Release : 2010-10
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1437922384

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In the U.S., health insurance (HI) coverage is linked to employment in ways that can affect both wages and the demand for certain types of workers. That close linkage can also affect people¿s decisions to enter the labor force, to work fewer or more hours, to retire, and even to work in one particular job or another. This economic brief shows that the overall impact on labor markets (LM) is difficult to predict. Although economic theory and experience provide some guidance as to the effect of specific provisions, large-scale changes to the HI system could have more extensive repercussions than have previously been observed and also may involve numerous factors that would interact ¿ affecting LM in potentially offsetting ways.

Author : Katherine Swartz
Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 18,93 MB
Release : 2006-05-11
Category : Medical
ISBN : 1610445201

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America's current system of health insurance, which relies almost exclusively on employer-sponsored coverage, is in danger of collapse, and this problem is not limited to the poor and working class. An increasing number of middle class Americans do not have employer-provided insurance and—due to skyrocketing premiums—cannot afford to purchase coverage for themselves. Reinsuring Health, by economist Katherine Swartz, examines this growing national crisis and outlines a concrete plan to make health insurance accessible and affordable for all Americans. Reinsuring Health documents why the number of uninsured Americans—now 45.5 million people—has grown in the last twenty-five years. Swartz focuses on how labor market changes—such as the decline of domestic manufacturing, decreased unionization, and the growth of non-standard work arrangements—have led U.S. employers to retreat from providing health insurance for their workers. These trends, combined with the increasing costs of medical care, have led to an explosion in health insurance premiums and a decline in coverage, particularly among the middle-class. Since those who seek insurance as individuals are generally most likely to need health care, private insurers charge higher premiums in the individual (non-group) markets than to people who obtain group insurance. This makes individual health insurance less attractive to the young and increasingly unaffordable for middle-class Americans. Similarly, insurers charge higher per person (or per family) premiums to small firms than to large companies, so many small firms do not sponsor coverage for their employees. Reinsuring Health shows how these problems can be overcome if the federal government provides a new reinsurance program which would protect insurance companies that provide small group and individual health insurance against the possibility that their policy-holders will incur very high medical expenses. By assuming some of the risk that people will face extremely costly medical bills, the government will make insurers less hesitant to offer coverage to high-risk individuals, and will help drive down premiums for others. Reinsuring Health demonstrates that this form of government reinsurance has worked in the past, helping to establish smooth running private markets for catastrophe insurance and secondary mortgages. Today, growing numbers of middle class Americans lack health insurance. Protection against the possibility of falling ill or getting hurt and having to pay extraordinary health care bills should not be a luxury available only to the very rich and the very poor. Reinsuring Health proposes a straightforward solution that would bring health insurance back within the reach of the increasing ranks of the uninsured, particularly those who are in the middle class.

Author : Jonathan Gruber
Publisher :
Page : 106 pages
File Size : 42,56 MB
Release : 1998
Category : Health insurance
ISBN :

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A distinctive feature of the health insurance market in the U.S. is the restriction of group insurance availability to the workplace. This has a number of important implications for the functioning of the labor market, through mobility from job-to-job or in and out of the labor force, wage determination, and hiring decisions. This paper reviews the large literature that has emerged in recent years to assess the impact of health insurance on the labor market. I begin with an overview of the institutional details relevant to assessing the interaction of health insurance and the labor market. I then present a theoretical overview of the effects of health insurance on mobility and wage/employment determination. I critically review the empirical literature on these topics, focusing in particular on the methodological issues that have been raised, and highlighting the unanswered questions which can be the focus of future work in this area.

Author : Kanika Kapur
Publisher :
Page : 211 pages
File Size : 44,7 MB
Release : 1997
Category :
ISBN :

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Second, small firms that offer health insurance may attempt to avoid expensive premium variability by maintaining a work force with low expected health costs. Using the NMES, I find small firms that offer health insurance are less like to hire and more likely to layoff workers with families that have medical conditions that lead to higher health insurance premiums. These results suggest that the link between small firm health insurance and employment leads to employment distortions.