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Death Spiral or Euthanasia? The Demise of Generous Group Health Insurance Coverage

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Author Info
Mark V. Pauly
Olivia Mitchell
Yuhui Zeng

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Abstract

Employers must determine which sorts of healthcare insurance plans to offer employees and also set employee premiums for each plan provided. Depending on how they structure the premiums that employees pay across different healthcare insurance plans, plan sponsors alter the incentives to choose one plan over another. If employees know they differ by risk level but premiums do not fully reflect these risk differences, this can give rise to a so-called "death spiral" due to adverse selection. In this paper use longitudinal information from a natural experiment in the management of health benefits for a large employer to explore the impact of moving from a fixed dollar contribution policy to a risk-adjusted employer contribution policy. Our results suggest that implementing a significant risk adjustment had no discernable effect on adverse selection against the most generous indemnity insurance policy. This stands in stark contrast to previous studies, which have tended to find large impacts. Further analysis suggests that previous studies which appeared to detect plans in the throes of a death spiral, may instead have been experiencing an inexorable movement away from a non-preferred product, one that would have been inefficient for almost all workers even in the absence of adverse selection.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 10464.

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Date of creation: May 2004
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10464

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies

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  1. Strombom, Bruce A. & Buchmueller, Thomas C. & Feldstein, Paul J., 2002. "Switching costs, price sensitivity and health plan choice," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 89-116, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Melissa W. Barringer & Olivia S. Mitchell, . "Workers' Preferences Among Company-Provided Health Insurance Plans," Pension Research Council Working Papers 94-5, Wharton School Pension Research Council, University of Pennsylvania.
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  3. Buchmueller, Thomas C. & Feldstein, Paul J., 1997. "The effect of price on switching among health plans," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 231-247, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Cutler, David M. & Zeckhauser, Richard J., 2000. "The anatomy of health insurance," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 11, pages 563-643 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. David M. Cutler & Sarah J. Reber, 1998. "Paying For Health Insurance: The Trade-Off Between Competition And Adverse Selection," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 113(2), pages 433-466, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Beaulieu, Nancy Dean, 2002. "Quality information and consumer health plan choices," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 43-63, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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