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Health Insurance and Tax Policy

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Author Info
Karsten Jeske
Sagiri Kitao () (Economics New York University)

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Abstract

The U.S. tax policy on health insurance favors only those offered group insurance through their employers, and is highly regressive since the subsidy takes the form of deductions from the progressive income tax system. The paper investigates alternatives to the current policy. We find that a complete removal of the subsidy results in a significant reduction in the insurance coverage and serious welfare deterioration. There is, however, room for improving welfare and raising the coverage, by eliminating regressiveness in the group insurance subsidy and by extending refundable credits to the private insurance market. Our work is the first in highlighting the importance of studying health policy in a general equilibrium framework with an endogenous demand for the health insurance. We use the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) to calibrate the process for income, health expenditure shocks and health insurance offer status through employers and succeed in producing the pattern of insurance demand as observed in the data, which serves as a solid benchmark for the policy experiments

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Paper provided by Society for Economic Dynamics in its series 2006 Meeting Papers with number 57.

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Date of creation: 03 Dec 2006
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Handle: RePEc:red:sed006:57

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Related research
Keywords: Income taxation; health insurance; heterogeneous agents;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy

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References listed on IDEAS
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  1. Igor Livshits & James MacGee & Michele Tertilt, 2003. "Consumer bankruptcy: a fresh start," Working Papers 617, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Glenn R. Hubbard & Jonathan Skinner & Stephen P. Zeldes, . "Precautionary Saving and Social Insurance," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 3-95, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    Other versions:
  3. Grossman, Michael, 1972. "On the Concept of Health Capital and the Demand for Health," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(2), pages 223-55, March-Apr. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Heathcote, Jonathan & Storesletten, Kjetil & Violante, Giovanni L, 2004. "The Cross-Sectional Implications of Rising Wage Inequality in the United States," CEPR Discussion Papers 4296, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Edward R. Whitehouse, 2003. "The Value of Pension Entitlements: A Model of Nine OECD Countries," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 9, OECD, Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs. [Downloadable!]
  6. Kjetil Storesletten & Chris I. Telmer & Amir Yaron, 2004. "Cyclical Dynamics in Idiosyncratic Labor Market Risk," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(3), pages 695-717, June.
  7. Jonathan Gruber, 2004. "Tax Policy for Health Insurance," NBER Working Papers 10977, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Aiyagari, S Rao, 1994. "Uninsured Idiosyncratic Risk and Aggregate Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 109(3), pages 659-84, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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