One of the major social policy issues facing the U.S. in the first decade of the 21st century is the large number of Americans lacking health insurance. This article surveys the major economic issues around covering the uninsured. I review the facts on insurance coverage and the nature of the uninsured; focus on explanations for why the U.S. has such a large, and growing, uninsured population; and discuss why we should care if individuals are uninsured. I then focus on policy options to address the problem of the uninsured, beginning with a discussion of the key issues and available evidence, and then turning to estimates from a micro-simulation model of the impact of alternative interventions to increase insurance coverage.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
13758.
Length: Date of creation: Jan 2008 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13758
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Jonathan Gruber, 2002.
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in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 16, pages 37-66
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!]
Other versions:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)