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What Do Longitudinal Data on Millions of Hospital Visits Tell Us about the Value of Public Health Insurance as a Safety Net for the Young and Privately Insured"

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Abstract

Young people with private health insurance sometimes transition to the public health insurance safety net after they get sick, but popular sources of cross-sectional data obscure how frequently these transitions occur. We use longitudinal data on almost all hospital visits in New York from 1995 to 2011. We show that young privately insured individuals with diagnoses that require more hospital visits in subsequent years are more likely to transition to public insurance. If we ignore the longitudinal transitions in our data, we obscure over 80% of the value of public health insurance to the young and privately insured.

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  • Amanda E. Kowalski, 2015. "What Do Longitudinal Data on Millions of Hospital Visits Tell Us about the Value of Public Health Insurance as a Safety Net for the Young and Privately Insured"," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1983, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    • Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1983
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    10. Amanda Kowalski, 2014. "The Early Impact of the Affordable Care Act, State by State," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 45(2 (Fall)), pages 277-355.
    11. Khwaja, Ahmed, 2010. "Estimating willingness to pay for medicare using a dynamic life-cycle model of demand for health insurance," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 156(1), pages 130-147, May.
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    Cited by:

    1. Flores, Gabriela & O’Donnell, Owen, 2016. "Catastrophic medical expenditure risk," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 1-15.
    2. Zelalem Yilma & Owen O’Donnell & Anagaw Mebratie & Getnet Alemu & Arjun S. Bedi, 2018. "Subjective Expectations of Medical Expenditures and Insurance in Rural Ethiopia," Contributions to Economic Analysis, in: Health Econometrics, volume 127, pages 23-55, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    3. Eric French & Elaine Kelly & Pieter Bakx & Owen O'Donnell & Eddy Doorslaer, 2016. "Spending on Health Care in the Netherlands: Not Going So Dutch," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 37, pages 593-625, September.
    4. Sven Neelsen & Supon Limwattananon & Owen O'Donnell & Eddy van Doorslaer, 2015. "Economic Impact of Illness with Health Insurance but without Income Insurance," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 15-060/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    5. Owen (O.A.) O'Donnell, 2019. "Financial Protection Against Medical Expense," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-010/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    6. Brevoort, Kenneth & Grodzicki, Daniel & Hackmann, Martin B., 2020. "The credit consequences of unpaid medical bills," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    7. Lakdawalla, Darius & Malani, Anup & Reif, Julian, 2017. "The insurance value of medical innovation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 94-102.
    8. Kenneth Brevoort & Daniel Grodzicki & Martin B. Hackmann, 2017. "Medicaid and Financial Health," NBER Working Papers 24002, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Health insurance; Nonelderly; Cohort;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I13 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Insurance, Public and Private

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