Worker Sorting, Taxes and Health Insurance Coverage

Kevin Lang and Hong Kang

No 13066, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We develop a model in which firms hire heterogeneous workers but must offer all workers insurance benefits under similar terms. In equilibrium, some firms offer free health insurance, some require an employee premium payment and some do not offer insurance. Making the employee contribution pre-tax lowers the cost to workers of a given employee premium and encourages more firms to charge. This increases the offer rate, lowers the take-up rate, increases (decreases) coverage among high (low) demand groups, with an indeterminate overall effect. We test the model using the expansion of section 125 plans between 1987 and 1996. The results are generally supportive.

JEL-codes: H22 H24 I11 J32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-ias and nep-pbe
Note: EH LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13066.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Worker Sorting, Taxes and Health Insurance Coverage (2010)
Working Paper: Worker Sorting, Taxes and Health Insurance Coverage (2005)
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:nbr:nberwo:13066

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13066

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().