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Full-Text Articles in Health Economics

Effects Of The Affordable Care Act On Part-Time Employment: Early Evidence, Marcus O. Dillender, Carolyn J. Heinrich, Susan N. Houseman (Corresponding Author) Jun 2016

Effects Of The Affordable Care Act On Part-Time Employment: Early Evidence, Marcus O. Dillender, Carolyn J. Heinrich, Susan N. Houseman (Corresponding Author)

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires employers with at least 50 full-time-equivalent employees to offer “affordable” health insurance to employees working 30 or more hours per week. If employers do not comply with the mandate, they may face substantial financial penalties. Employers can potentially circumvent the mandate by reducing weekly hours below the 30-hour threshold or by using other nonstandard employment arrangements (direct-hire temporaries, agency temporaries, small contractors, and independent contractors). We examine the effects of the ACA on short-hours, part-time employment. Using monthly CPS data, we estimate that the ACA resulted in an increase in low-hours, involuntary part-time employment …


The Effect Of Health Insurance On Workers' Compensation Filing: Evidence From The Affordable Care Act's Age-Based Threshold For Dependent Coverage, Marcus O. Dillender Jul 2015

The Effect Of Health Insurance On Workers' Compensation Filing: Evidence From The Affordable Care Act's Age-Based Threshold For Dependent Coverage, Marcus O. Dillender

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper identifies the effect of health insurance on workers' compensation (WC) filing for young adults by implementing a regression discontinuity design using WC medical claims data from Texas. The results suggest health insurance factors into the decision to have WC pay for discretionary care. The implied instrumental variables estimates suggest a 10 percentage point decrease in health insurance coverage increases WC bills by 15.3 percent. Despite the large impact of health insurance on the number of WC bills, the additional cost to WC at age 26 appears to be small as most of the increase comes from small bills.


The Potential Effects Of Federal Health Insurance Reforms On Employment Arrangements And Compensation, Marcus O. Dillender, Carolyn J. Heinrich, Susan N. Houseman Apr 2015

The Potential Effects Of Federal Health Insurance Reforms On Employment Arrangements And Compensation, Marcus O. Dillender, Carolyn J. Heinrich, Susan N. Houseman

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) presents an opportunity to significantly improve compensation for American workers. A potential concern, though, is that employers will circumvent the employer mandate by increasing their use of workers in staffing arrangements that are not covered by the mandate: workers averaging less than 30 hours per week, working on a temporary basis, or working in organizations with fewer than 50 full-time employees. In this paper, we shed light on the likely effects that the ACA will have on employment arrangements. We first examine how part-time employment in Massachusetts changed after its health insurance reform, which is …


The Effect Of Medicare Eligibility On Spousal Insurance Coverage, Marcus O. Dillender, Karen Mulligan Jan 2015

The Effect Of Medicare Eligibility On Spousal Insurance Coverage, Marcus O. Dillender, Karen Mulligan

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

A majority of married couples in the United States take advantage of the fact that employers often provide health insurance coverage to spouses. When the older spouses become eligible for Medicare, however, many of them can no longer provide their younger spouses with coverage. In this paper, we study how spousal eligibility for Medicare affects the health insurance and health care access of the younger spouse. We find spousal eligibility for Medicare results in the younger spouse having worse insurance coverage and reduced access to health care services.


Mandate-Based Health Reform And The Labor Market: Evidence From The Massachusetts Reform, Jonathan T. Kolstad, Amanda E. Kowalski Jul 2014

Mandate-Based Health Reform And The Labor Market: Evidence From The Massachusetts Reform, Jonathan T. Kolstad, Amanda E. Kowalski

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We model the labor market impact of the key provisions of the national and Massachusetts "mandate-based" health reforms: individual mandates, employer mandates, and subsidies. We characterize the compensating differential for employer-sponsored health insurance (ESHI) and the welfare impact of reform in terms of "sufficient statistics." We compare welfare under mandate-based reform to welfare in a counterfactual world where individuals do not value ESHI. Relying on the Massachusetts reform, we find that jobs with ESHI pay $2,812 less annually, somewhat less than the cost of ESHI to employers. Accordingly, the deadweight loss of mandate-based health reform was approximately 8 percent of …


Medicaid And The Labor Supply Of Single Mothers: Implications For Health Care Reform, Vincent Pohl May 2014

Medicaid And The Labor Supply Of Single Mothers: Implications For Health Care Reform, Vincent Pohl

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act expands Medicaid and introduces health insurance subsidies, thereby changing work incentives for single mothers. To undertake an ex ante policy evaluation of the employment effects of the PPACA, I structurally estimate a model of labor supply and health insurance choice exploiting existing variation in Medicaid policies. Simulations show that single mothers increase their labor supply at the extensive and the intensive margin by six and five percent, respectively. The PPACA leads to crowding-out of employer-sponsored health insurance of about 40 percent and increases single mothers' welfare by about $190 per month.