Pass-Through of Public Subsidies in Health Insurance

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen Marie Carey
Author(s):  
Mark Merlis

Proposals to provide or subsidize health insurance for low-income families must take account of the fact that many workers have access to employer-sponsored insurance (ESI), but decline it because of required employee premium contributions. This article considers a tax credit for the employee share of ESI in the context of a broader program of income-based health insurance tax credits. Helping uninsured workers pay for available ESI could be more cost-effective than subsidizing their coverage in the nongroup market. The credit would also be available to workers who were already covered, both for equity reasons and to reduce the incentives for employers to drop coverage or for workers to shift to subsidized individual plans. One key issue is how to prevent employers from reducing their current health plan contributions to take advantage of the new funding. Other design questions considered by the article include whether workers should be able to choose between ESI and nongroup coverage, whether minimum benefit standards should apply for employer plans, and how to achieve a fair balance in subsidies for group and nongroup coverage.


1983 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noelle Whiteside

ABSTRACTThe approved societies, who were charged with the administration of health insurance in Britain, have long been blamed for the failure of the scheme to expand its coverage or scope in the interwar period. This paper takes a closer look at the administrative process and argues that societies were more vulnerable to central regulation than is commonly thought and were unable to resist cuts in public subsidies and extensions in liability introduced at their expense. They provided a convenient scapegoat for policies emanating primarily from the economic orthodoxy subscribed to by both government and the Treasury, modified to protect the unemployed during the slump. Health insurance policy was dominated to a large extent by the Government Actuary, who aimed to guarantee the cost effectiveness of the scheme. This paper also shows how administrative definitions and practices affected the classification of claimants to state social insurance at this time. It re-establishes the major weaknesses of the system, arguing that – in the light of recent discussions about reviving a system of national health insurance – we have much to learn from looking again at the experience of the interwar period.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Finkelstein ◽  
Neale Mahoney ◽  
Matthew J. Notowidigdo

Health insurance confers benefits to the previously uninsured, including improvements in health, reductions in out-of-pocket spending, and reduced medical debt. However, because the nominally uninsured pay only a small share of their medical expenses, health insurance also provides substantial transfers to nonrecipient parties who would otherwise bear the costs of providing uncompensated care to the uninsured. The prevalence of uncompensated care helps explain the limited take-up of heavily subsidized public health insurance and the evidence that many recipients value formal health insurance at substantially less than the cost to insurers of providing that coverage. The distributional implications of public subsidies for health insurance depend critically on the ultimate economic incidence of the transfers that they deliver to providers of uncompensated care.


2018 ◽  
Vol 108 (8) ◽  
pp. 2048-2087 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marika Cabral ◽  
Michael Geruso ◽  
Neale Mahoney

A central question in the debate over privatized Medicare is whether increased government payments to private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans generate lower premiums for consumers or higher profits for producers. Using difference‑in‑differences variation brought about by a sharp legislative change, we find that MA insurers pass through 45 percent of increased payments in lower premiums and an additional 9 percent in more generous benefits. We show that advantageous selection into MA cannot explain this incomplete pass‑through. Instead, our evidence suggests that market power is important, with premium pass‑through rates of 13 percent in the least competitive markets and 74 percent in the most competitive. (JEL G22, H51, I11, I13, I18)


2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-74
Author(s):  
Jacquelyn W. Chou ◽  
Darius N. Lakdawalla ◽  
Jacqueline Vanderpuye-Orgle

Abstract The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have experienced tremendous economic and health gains in recent decades. Two of the major health challenges faced by the BRICS and other low and middle income countries are decreasing inequity in health outcomes and increasing affordability of health insurance. One fiscally sustainable option for the BRICS governments is a public subsidy system for private health insurance plans. This essay lays out the potential applicability and impacts of public subsidies for private health insurance plans, as well as opportunities and challenges for implementation, in the BRICS countries. Overall, providing public subsidies rather than health insurance would enable the BRICS governments to avoid the open-ended financial liabilities that have plagued advanced economies, while still expanding access to health insurance and encouraging the develoment of a robust private health insurance market. We conclude by suggesting an array of pilot programs that could serve as the seeds for publicly subsidized health insurance schemes within the BRICS markets.


Author(s):  
J. H. Butler ◽  
C. J. Humphreys

Electromagnetic radiation is emitted when fast (relativistic) electrons pass through crystal targets which are oriented in a preferential (channelling) direction with respect to the incident beam. In the classical sense, the electrons perform sinusoidal oscillations as they propagate through the crystal (as illustrated in Fig. 1 for the case of planar channelling). When viewed in the electron rest frame, this motion, a result of successive Bragg reflections, gives rise to familiar dipole emission. In the laboratory frame, the radiation is seen to be of a higher energy (because of the Doppler shift) and is also compressed into a narrower cone of emission (due to the relativistic “searchlight” effect). The energy and yield of this monochromatic light is a continuously increasing function of the incident beam energy and, for beam energies of 1 MeV and higher, it occurs in the x-ray and γ-ray regions of the spectrum. Consequently, much interest has been expressed in regard to the use of this phenomenon as the basis for fabricating a coherent, tunable radiation source.


Author(s):  
Robert M. Glaeser

It is well known that a large flux of electrons must pass through a specimen in order to obtain a high resolution image while a smaller particle flux is satisfactory for a low resolution image. The minimum particle flux that is required depends upon the contrast in the image and the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio at which the data are considered acceptable. For a given S/N associated with statistical fluxtuations, the relationship between contrast and “counting statistics” is s131_eqn1, where C = contrast; r2 is the area of a picture element corresponding to the resolution, r; N is the number of electrons incident per unit area of the specimen; f is the fraction of electrons that contribute to formation of the image, relative to the total number of electrons incident upon the object.


Author(s):  
George Christov ◽  
Bolivar J. Lloyd

A new high intensity grid cap has been designed for the RCA-EMU-3 electron microscope. Various parameters of the new grid cap were investigated to determine its characteristics. The increase in illumination produced provides ease of focusing on the fluorescent screen at magnifications from 1500 to 50,000 times using an accelerating voltage of 50 KV.The EMU-3 type electron gun assembly consists of a V-shaped tungsten filament for a cathode with a thin metal threaded cathode shield and an anode with a central aperture to permit the beam to course the length of the column. The cathode shield is negatively biased at a potential of several hundred volts with respect to the filament. The electron beam is formed by electrons emitted from the tip of the filament which pass through an aperture of 0.1 inch diameter in the cap and then it is accelerated by the negative high voltage through a 0.625 inch diameter aperture in the anode which is at ground potential.


Author(s):  
Richard W. Burry ◽  
Diane M. Hayes

Electron microscopic (EM) immunocytochemistry localization of the neuron specific protein p65 could show which organelles contain this antigen. Antibodies (Ab) labeled with horseradish peroxidase (HRP) followed by chromogen development show a broad diffuse label distribution within cells and restricting identification of organelles. Particulate label (e.g. 10 nm colloidal gold) is highly desirable but not practical because penetration into cells requires destroying the plasma membrane. We report pre-embedding immunocytochemistry with a particulate marker, 1 nm gold, that will pass through membranes treated with saponin, a mild detergent.Cell cultures of the rat cerebellum were fixed in buffered 4% paraformaldehyde and 0.1% glutaraldehyde (Glut.). The buffer for all incubations and rinses was phosphate buffered saline with: 1% calf serum, 0.2% saponin, 0.1% gelatin, 50 mM glycine 1 mg/ml bovine serum albumin, and (not in the HRP labeled cultures) 0.02% sodium azide. The monoclonal #48 to p65 was used with three label systems: HRP, 1 nm avidin gold with IntenSE M development, and 1 nm avidin gold with Danscher development.


Author(s):  
L. D. Marks ◽  
J. P. Zhang

A not uncommon question in electron microscopy is what happens to the momentum transferred by the electron beam to a crystal. If the beam passes through a crystal and is preferentially diffracted in one direction, is the momentum ’lost’ by the beam transferred to the crystal? Newton’s third law implies that this must be the case. Some experimental observations also indicate that this is the case; for instance, with small particles if the particles are supported on the top surface of a film they often do not line up on the zone axis, but if they are on the bottom they do. However, if momentum is transferred to the crystal, then surely we are dealing with inelastic scattering, not elastic scattering and is not the scattering probability different? In addition, normally we consider inelastic scatter as incoherent, and therefore the part of the electron wave that is inelastically scattered will not coherently interfere with the part of the wave that is scattered; but, electron holography and high resolution electron microscopy work so the wave passing through a specimen must be coherent with the wave that does not pass through the specimen.


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