Quantitative Analysis of Health Insurance Reform: Separating Regulation from Redistribution

Svetlana Pashchenko and Ponpoje Porapakkarm

Review of Economic Dynamics, 2013, vol. 16, issue 3, 383-404

Abstract: Two key components of the recent U.S. health reform are a new regulation of the individual health insurance market and an increase in income redistribution in the economy. Which component contributes more to the welfare outcome of the reform? We address this question by constructing a general equilibrium life cycle model that incorporates both medical expenses and labor income risks. We replicate the key features of the current health insurance system in the U.S. and calibrate the model using the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey dataset. We find that the reform decreases the number of uninsured more than twice and generates substantial welfare gains. These welfare gains mostly come from the redistributive measures embedded in the reform, rather than from the regulatory changes. (Copyright: Elsevier)

Keywords: Health insurance; Health reform; Risk sharing; General equilibrium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D52 D91 E21 E65 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (99)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2012.09.002
Access to full texts is restricted to ScienceDirect subscribers and institutional members. See http://www.sciencedirect.com/ for details.

Related works:
Software Item: Code files for "Quantitative Analysis of Health Insurance Reform: Separating Regulation from Redistribution" (2012)
Working Paper: Quantitative analysis of health insurance reform: separating regulation from redistribution (2012)
Working Paper: Online Appendix to "Quantitative Analysis of Health Insurance Reform: Separating Regulation from Redistribution" (2012)
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:red:issued:11-70

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.economic ... ription-information/

DOI: 10.1010/j.red.2012.09.002

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Economic Dynamics is currently edited by Loukas Karabarbounis

More articles in Review of Economic Dynamics from Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Zimmermann ().