IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/itaxpf/v9y2002i1p33-50.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Role of Tax Subsidies in the Market for Health Insurance

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Stabile

    ()

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of tax subsidies in linking the market for health insurance to the employment relationship. Using both American and Canadian data, it investigates how these subsidies influence whether health insurance coverage is offered in different sized firms and whether it is offered through an employer versus the individual private market. The findings indicate that tax subsidies encourage the provision of insurance in smaller firms. Removal of the subsidies would cause the level of insurance in small firms to decline significantly, but would not cause a large change in the level of insurance in larger firms. Part of this decline would be offset by increases in the market for individually purchased insurance. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2002

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Stabile, 2002. "The Role of Tax Subsidies in the Market for Health Insurance," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 9(1), pages 33-50, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:9:y:2002:i:1:p:33-50
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1014461622779
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1014461622779
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Holmer, Martin, 1984. "Tax policy and the demand for health insurance," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 203-221, December.
    2. Woodbury, Stephen A, 1983. "Substitution between Wage and Nonwage Benefits," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(1), pages 166-182, March.
    3. Jonathan Gruber, 1998. "Health Insurance and the Labor Market," NBER Working Papers 6762, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Jonathan Gruber & James M. Poterba, 1993. "Tax Incentives and the Decision to Purchase Health Insurance: Evidence from the Self-Employed," NBER Working Papers 4435, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Manning, Willard G. & Blumberg, Linda & Moulton, Lawrence H., 1995. "The demand for alcohol: The differential response to price," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 123-148, June.
    6. William M. Gentry & Eric Peress, 1994. "Taxes and Fringe Benefits Offered by Employers," NBER Working Papers 4764, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Holtz-Eakin, Douglas & Penrod, John R. & Rosen, Harvey S., 1996. "Health insurance and the supply of entrepreneurs," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1-2), pages 209-235, October.
    8. Feldstein, Martin S, 1973. "The Welfare Loss of Excess Health Insurance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(2), pages 251-280, Part I, M.
    9. Marquis, M Susan & Phelps, Charles E, 1987. "Price Elasticity and Adverse Selection in the Demand for Supplementary Health Insurance," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 25(2), pages 299-313, April.
    10. Keeler, Emmett B & Morrow, Daniel T & Newhouse, Joseph P, 1977. "The Demand for Supplementary Health Insurance, or Do Deductibles Matter?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(4), pages 789-801, August.
    11. Mark Stabile, 2001. "Private insurance subsidies and public health care markets: evidence from Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 34(4), pages 921-942, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mark Stabile & Sarah Thomson, 2014. "The Changing Role of Government in Financing Health Care: An International Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(2), pages 480-518, June.
    2. Glied, Sherry & Hong, Kai, 2018. "Health care in a multi-payer system: Spillovers of health care service demand among adults under 65 on utilization and outcomes in medicare," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 165-176.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mark Stabile, 1999. "Tax Subsidies And The Provision Of Health Insurance In Small Firms," Working Papers mstabile-99-01, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    2. Jonathan Gruber & James M. Poterba, 1996. "Tax Subsidies to Employer-Provided Health Insurance," NBER Chapters, in: Empirical Foundations of Household Taxation, pages 135-168, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Manning, Willard G. & Marquis, M. Susan, 1996. "Health insurance: The tradeoff between risk pooling and moral hazard," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 609-639, October.
    4. Jonathan Gruber & Michael Lettau, 2000. "How Elastic is the Firm's Demand for Health Insurance?," NBER Working Papers 8021, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Jonathan Gruber & James M. Poterba, 1993. "Tax Incentives and the Decision to Purchase Health Insurance: Evidence from the Self-Employed," NBER Working Papers 4435, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Jonathan Gruber, 2002. "Taxes and Health Insurance," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 16, pages 37-66, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Finkelstein, Amy, 2002. "The effect of tax subsidies to employer-provided supplementary health insurance: evidence from Canada," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(3), pages 305-339, June.
    8. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3309-3416 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Jung, Juergen & Hall, Diane M. Harnek & Rhoads, Thomas, 2013. "Does the availability of parental health insurance affect the college enrollment decision of young Americans?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 49-65.
    10. Gruber, Jonathan & Lettau, Michael, 2004. "How elastic is the firm's demand for health insurance?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(7-8), pages 1273-1293, July.
    11. Craig William Perry & Harvey Rosen, 2001. "Insurance and the Utilization of Medical Services Among the Self-Employed," CESifo Working Paper Series 580, CESifo.
    12. Fossen, Frank M. & König, Johannes, 2015. "Public health insurance and entry into self-employment," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112934, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    13. James Bailey, 2017. "Health insurance and the supply of entrepreneurs: new evidence from the affordable care act," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 49(3), pages 627-646, October.
    14. Jonathan Gruber, 2008. "Covering the Uninsured in the U.S," NBER Working Papers 13758, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Brigitte C. Madrian, 2005. "The U.S. health care system and labor markets," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, vol. 50(Jun), pages 137-163.
    16. Michael Smart & Mark Stabile, 2005. "Tax credits, insurance, and the use of medical care," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(2), pages 345-365, May.
    17. Tuuli Juurikkala & Olga Lazareva, 2006. "Non-wage benefits, costs of turnover, and labor attachment: evidence from Russian firms," Working Papers w0062, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR).
    18. Alison J. Wellington, 2001. "Health Insurance Coverage And Entrepreneurship," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 19(4), pages 465-478, October.
    19. Gulcin Gumus & Tracy Regan, 2006. "Tax Incentives as a Solution to the Uninsured: Evidence from the Self-Employed," Working Papers 0911, University of Miami, Department of Economics, revised Oct 2008.
    20. Dizioli, Allan & Pinheiro, Roberto, 2016. "Health insurance as a productive factor," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 1-24.
    21. Jean Marie Abraham & William B. Vogt & Martin Gaynor, 2002. "Household Demand for Employer-Based Health Insurance," NBER Working Papers 9144, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    tax subsidies; health insurance;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:9:y:2002:i:1:p:33-50. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Sonal Shukla) or (Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.