Health Insurance Reform: The Impact of a Medicare Buy-In
2011/09/06
研討會日期 : 2011-09-06
時間 : 14:30
主講人 : Minchung Hsu
地點 : Conference Room B110
演講者簡介 : Minchung Hsu received his Ph.D. in Economics from University of California, Log Angeles in 2007. He is currently serving as Assistant Professor of Economics at National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. His research interest is in macroeconomics and dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models.
演講摘要 : Current U.S. policy provides medical insurance in the form of Medicare to individuals aged 65 and over. Younger individuals who do not qualify for special assistance may have group health insurance through their employer, purchase individual health insurance, or go without. This paper evaluates the general equilibrium and welfare consequences of health insurance reform in a calibrated life-cycle economy with incomplete markets and endogenous labor supply. Individuals face uncertainty each period about their future health status, medical expenditures, labor productivity, access to employer provided group health insurance, and the length of their life. In this environment, incomplete markets and adverse selection, which restricts the type of insurance contracts available in equilibrium, creates a potential role for health insurance reform. In particular, we consider a policy reform that would allow younger workers (aged 55-64) to purchase insurance similar to Medicare coverage. We find that adverse selection eliminates any market for a Medicare buy-in if it is offered as an unsubsidized option to individual private health insurance. Hence, we compare the equilibrium properties of the current insurance system with those that obtain when all individuals without employer provided group insurance are required to purchase the buy-in and those of a system where the buy-in is optional, but subsidized by the government.
