 Medicare for all or medicare for none? A macroeconomic analysis of healthcare reformMark Kelly Journal of Macroeconomics, 2020, vol. 63, issue C Abstract: In this study, I develop a novel general equilibrium life cycle model composed of finitely-lived households that differ according to age, skill level, and access to employer-provided health insurance. After introducing a “Medicare for all” health insurance system to the model, I examine how the welfare response to this policy change will differ according to household characteristics. Then, I compare this system to a completely privatized health insurance system that achieves universal health insurance coverage through the creation of utilization-based premium subsidies. In general, both systems tend to improve the welfare of young households at the expense of old households. However, when using average value-of-life as the primary measure of welfare, Medicare for all either benefits unskilled households at the expense of skilled households, or makes both worse off. In contrast, the privatized system improves the average value-of-life of all household groups, regardless of skill level or prior access to employer-provided health insurance. Keywords: General equilibrium; Medicare; Medicare for all; Health capital accumulation; Health insurance; Healthcare consumption (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jmacro:v:63:y:2020:i:c:s0164070419301120 DOI: 10.1016/j.jmacro.2019.103170 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Macroeconomics is currently edited by Douglas McMillin and Theodore Palivos More articles in Journal of Macroeconomics from Elsevier |
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