Health Insurance Take-up by the Near Elderly / Thomas C. Buchmueller, Sabina Ohri.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Buchmueller, Thomas C.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ohri, Sabina.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w11951.

NBER working paper series no. w11951

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2006.

Summary:

This study examines the effect of price on the demand for health insurance by early retirees between the ages of 55 and 64. The analysis is based on administrative data from a medium sized employer and takes advantage of a natural experiment created by the firm's health insurance contribution policy. The amount the firm contributes toward retiree health insurance coverage depends on when a person retired and her years of service at that date. As a result of this policy, there is considerable variation in out-of-pocket premiums faced by individuals in the data, but this variation is independent of the non-price attributes of the health insurance plans offered, and plausibly exogenous to individual characteristics that are likely to affect the demand for insurance. We find that price has a statistically significant but small effect on the decision to take up coverage. The implied elasticities are very similar to results found in previous studies using very different data.

Notes:

Print version record

January 2006.