Older Workers' Access to Employer-Sponsored Retiree Health Insurance, 2000-2004

Christine Eibner, Alice Zawacki and Elaine Zimmerman

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: Using a multivariate framework, we analyze recent trends in employer provision of retiree health insurance (RHI), eligibility for new retirees, and retiree contribution requirements. We also explore whether local labor market characteristics such as the unemployment rate influence RHI provision. Finally, we examine whether the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) was associated with diverging trends in RHI access for Medicare-eligible and early retirees. Data come for the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey—Insurance Component (MEPS-IC). We find that, while RHI provision to existing retirees remained stable, eligibility for new retirees declined, and contribution requirements increased between 2000 and 2004. The local labor market had no effect on RHI provision. While early retiree coverage was more common than coverage for Medicare-eligible retirees, we did not find a divergence subsequent to MMA. These results suggest growing financial instability for retirees, both because RHI contribution requirements increased, and because businesses dropped coverage for new retirees.

Keywords: retiree health insurance; employers; Medicare; aging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2007-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-hea, nep-ias and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2007/CES-WP-07-12.pdf First version, 2007 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:07-12

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dawn Anderson ().