Modeling health insurance expansions: Effects of alternate approaches

Dahlia K. Remler, Joshua Graff Zivin and Sherry A. Glied
Additional contact information
Dahlia K. Remler: Department of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, Postal: Department of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
Sherry A. Glied: Department of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, Postal: Department of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2004, vol. 23, issue 2, 291-313

Abstract: Estimates of the costs and consequences of many types of public policy proposals play an important role in the development and adoption of particular policy programs. Estimates of the same, or similar, policies that employ different modeling approaches can yield widely divergent results. Such divergence often undermines effective policymaking. These problems are particularly prominent for health insurance expansion programs. Concern focuses on predictions of the numbers of individuals who will be insured and the costs of the proposals. Several different simulation-modeling approaches are used to predict these effects, making the predictions difficult to compare. This paper categorizes and describes the different approaches used; explains the conceptual and theoretical relationships between the methods; demonstrates empirically an example of the (quite restrictive) conditions under which all approaches can yield quantitatively identical predictions; and empirically demonstrates conditions under which the approaches diverge and the quantitative extent of that divergence. All modeling approaches implicitly make assumptions about functional form that impose restrictions on unobservable heterogeneity. Those assumptions can dramatically affect the quantitative predictions made. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/pam.20005 Link to full text; subscription required (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Modeling Health Insurance Expansions: Effects of Alternate Approaches (2002)
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:wly:jpamgt:v:23:y:2004:i:2:p:291-313

DOI: 10.1002/pam.20005

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().