scholarly journals Employer-Provided Health Insurance and Retirement Behavior

ILR Review ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Gustman ◽  
Thomas L. Steinmeier

Using data from the 1969–79 Retirement History Study, the 1977 National Medical Care Expenditure Survey, the 1983–86 Survey of Consumer Finances, and the 1988 Current Population Survey, the authors analyze, with a structural retirement model, the effect on retirement of employer-provided health benefits. Such benefits, they find, tend to delay retirement until the age of eligibility and afterward to accelerate it. The net effect is small: employer-provided health benefits lowered male retirement age by only about 1.3 months. Valuing health benefits at the price of private health insurance to unaffiliated men, rather than at the cost to employers, increases the effect. Ignoring retiree health benefits in retirement models creates only a small bias.

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yawen Jiang ◽  
Weiyi Ni

Abstract Background Information on risk selection is important for the regulation and development of supplemental private health insurance (PHI). The research on risk selection into supplemental PHI has been documented in several developed countries where the regulation of the PHI markets was relatively mature. However, evidence on this important aspect of the supplemental PHI market in China is still absent in the literature. The private insurers in China were not prohibited from discrimination against pre-existing conditions and did not guarantee ongoing enrolment. Therefore, the direction and degree of risk selection could not be inferred using the evidence from the other countries. To provide evidence on risk selection into supplemental PHI in China, we conducted a cross-sectional analysis using data from the 2015 wave of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Results Using probit models, we found that individuals having better self-reported general health were more likely to enrol in PHI in China, suggesting advantageous selection. This result was confirmed by an alternative analysis using an instrumental variable. We also adjusted the realized occurrence of hospitalization by excluding potential moral hazard effect and showed that the adjusted hospitalization risk was negatively associated with PHI enrolment, which also indicated advantageous selection. Conclusions The findings suggested potential over-insurance of healthier individuals or under-insurance of less healthy individuals. The regulation of the PHI market in China should aim to address the inefficiency. The current study could also contribute to the information base for policymakers in countries where the PHI markets similarly lack strong regulation.


Author(s):  
Beth C. Fuchs

The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) could be combined with health insurance tax credits to extend coverage to the uninsured. An extended FEHBP, or “E-FEHBP,” would be open to all individuals who were not covered through work or public programs and who also were eligible for the tax credits on the basis of income. E-FEHBP also would be open to employees of very small firms, regardless of their eligibility for tax credits. Most plans available to FEHBP participants would be required to offer enrollment to E-FEHBP participants, although premiums would be rated separately. High-risk individuals would be diverted to a separate high-risk pool, the cost of which would be subsidized by the federal government. E-FEHBP would be administered by the states, or if a state declined, by an entity that contracted with the Office of Personnel Management. While E-FEHBP would provide group insurance to people who otherwise could not get it, premiums could exceed the tax-credit amount and some people still might find the coverage unaffordable.


2004 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff R J Richardson ◽  
Leonie Segal

The cost to government of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is rising at over 10 percent per annum. The government subsidy to Private Health Insurance (PHI) is about $2.4 billion and rising. Despite this, the queues facing public patients ? which were the primary justification for the assistance to PHI ? do not appear to be shortening. Against this backdrop, we seek to evaluate recent policies. It is shown that the reason commonly given for the support of PHI ? the need to preserve the market share of private hospitals and relieve pressure upon public hospitals ? is based upon a factually incorrect analysis of the hospital sector in the last decade. It is similarly true that the ?problem? of rising pharmaceutical expenditures has been exaggerated. The common element in both sets of policies is that they result in cost shifting from the public to the private purse and have little to do with the quality or quantity of health services.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 509-518
Author(s):  
Misnaniarti Misnaniarti ◽  
Fenny Etrawati

Implementation of National Health Insurance is thought to be the cause ofincreasing number of visits to health facilities, especially in elderly peoplewho tend to be in sick. This study aims to analyze the outpatient utilizationby elderly in South Sumatera region. Study design was cross-sectional.Samples was elderly in South Sumatra (n = 2,833 people). Study done on2016, using data from Survei Sosial Ekonomi Nasional (Susenas) at 2015. Dataanalysis used chi-square test and multiple logistic regression. Based on thestudy known that outpatient utilization of elderly in all health facilitiesduring the past month amounted to 29.2%. Providers selected when elderlyneeded of outpatient treatment, most often visited to the doctor'spractice/midwife's practice (46.2%), and puskesmas (24.2%). Elderly whohas private health insurance have a tendency was 1.9 times greater (OR=1.9)to utilize outpatient compared to elderly who do not have insurance. Itsconcluded that variables associated with outpatient care utilization are:health insurance membership (OR=1.9) and work activity (OR=1.5). It isrecommended for elderly to remain active in their activities so that they canrealize the healthy and active aging and reduce the sick visits to healthfacilities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Beatriz Perez Afonso ◽  
Mayra Gonçalves Menegueti ◽  
Thamiris Ricci de Araújo ◽  
Lucieli Dias Pedreschi Chaves ◽  
Ana Maria Laus

ABSTRACT Objectives: to analyze lawsuits brought by beneficiaries of health insurance operators. Methods: this was a cross-sectional descriptive study carried out in a large-capacity private health insurance operator using data collected by the company from 2012 to 2015. Results: ninety-six lawsuits were brought by 86 beneficiaries regarding medical procedures (38.5%), treatments (26.1%), examinations (14.6%), medications (9.4%), home care (6.2%), and other types of hospitalization (5.2%). The procedures with the highest number of lawsuits were percutaneous rhizotomy; chemotherapy; treatment-related positron-emission tomography scans; and for medications relative to antineoplastic and Hepatitis C treatment. Conclusions: the lawsuits were filed because of the operators’ refusal to comply with items not established in contracts or not regulated and authorized by the Brazilian National Regulatory Agency for Private Health Insurance and Plans, refusals considered unfounded.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 550-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Gans ◽  
Andrew Leigh ◽  
Martin Schmalz ◽  
Adam Triggs

AbstractEconomic theory suggests that monopoly prices hurt consumers but benefit shareholders. But in a world where individuals or households can be both consumers and shareholders, the impact of market power on inequality depends in part on the relative distribution of consumption and corporate equity ownership across individuals or households. The paper calculates this distribution for the United States, using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances and the Consumer Expenditure Survey, spanning nearly three decades from 1989 to 2016. In 2016, the top 20 per cent consumed approximately as much as the bottom 60 per cent, but had 15 times as much corporate equity. Because ownership is more skewed than consumption, increased mark-ups increase inequality. Moreover, over time, corporate equity has become even more skewed relative to consumption.


Author(s):  
Nancy Ammon Jianakoplos

This paper examines gender differences in stated versus observed financial risk preferences. The responses of women versus men to a question regarding financial risk preferences are compared to the proportion of risky assets held in their portfolios using data from the 1995 Survey of Consumer Finances. The data show that women are more likely to express an unwillingness to take financial risks. Stated financial risk preferences are found to be consistent with observed risk preferences at the ordinal, but not the quantitative, level. Contradicting their stated risk preferences, risky assets constitute, on average, one-third of the financial assets of households that indicate they are unwilling to take any financial risks. Financial planners and advisers frequently use a clients expressed willingness to take on risk as an important determinant in asset allocation recommendations. Consistent gender differences in these responses, in addition to inconsistencies between the clients stated risk preferences and observed portfolio allocation, may lead advisers to make inappropriate recommendations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 508-508
Author(s):  
Stephen Crystal

Abstract This study compares the effect of the 2008 recession and subsequent recovery across generational cohorts by evaluating age-cohort trajectories of income inequality. Using data from the 2007 to 2016 waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances, we examine the trajectory of inequality for the overall population and by cohort in years spanning the Great Recession and subsequent recovery. We find that increases in per-capita income and wealth observed at the population-level during the recovery were not reflected among households below the median, leading to increasing inequality. Within cohorts, we observe growing inequality within cohorts in their primary working years. Findings are consistent with a model of integrative cumulative dis/ advantage, which predicts increasing within-cohort inequality over the life course influenced both by persistent micro- and macro-level processes of increasing heterogeneity. Our analyses highlight the potential role of extreme business cycle fluctuations, booms and busts, to exacerbate this underlying process.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (093) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Brooke Helppie-McFall ◽  
◽  
Joanne W. Hsu ◽  

In spring 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and related shutdowns had huge effects on unemployment. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, we describe the financial profiles of US families whose workers were most vulnerable to coronavirus-related earnings losses in the spring of 2020, based on whether a particular worker was deemed "essential" and whether a worker's job could be conducted remotely. We use descriptive analytic techniques to examine how families' baseline financial situations would allow them to weather COVID-shutdown-related earnings losses. We find that families with non-teleworkable workers who were most vulnerable to layoff also had both demographic and financial profiles that are associated with greater vulnerability to income shocks: non-teleworkable families were more likely to be people of color and single wage-earners, and also to have less savings. The median non-teleworkable family, whether in non-essential or essential occupations, held only three weeks of income in savings, underscoring the importance of policy measures to blunt the financial effect of the COVID crisis.


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