Browsing by Subject "Health Insurance"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Affordable Care? The Impact of State Participation in Health Insurance Exchanges on Premiums
    (Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, 2014-05-05) Krinn, Kelly
    The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 initiated many policies to address high uninsurance rates and rising healthcare costs. One policy, the health insurance exchanges (also called marketplaces), was introduced to facilitate the purchase of qualified health plans by individuals not covered by an employer or public program by creating a platform for consumers to explore and compare plans. The health insurance exchanges established in 2013 have been the subject of media attention, given the various technological problems that have afflicted the enrollment processes. However, premiums in these new individual insurance markets have received less attention. In this paper, I examine how premiums vary with state involvement in the health insurance exchanges through exchange governance, plan management authority, and plan management strategy. By better understanding the possible impact of exchange policy variations between states, it may be possible to consider what level of state involvement is needed for the health insurance exchanges to function optimally. The results of this analysis suggest that states governing their own exchanges have lower premiums than partnership or federally facilitated exchanges.
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    Essays on public economics
    (2013-05) Tsujiyama, Hitoshi
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    Nursing in a Prospective Payment System Health Care Environment.
    (School of Nursing, University of Minnesota., 1986) Newman, Margaret; Autio, Sharon
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    What are Network Breadth and Keeping Your Health Plan Worth?: Evidence from Covered California
    (2018-07) Drake, Coleman
    The Health Insurance Marketplaces have received considerable attention for their narrow network health insurance plans. Yet, little is known about consumer tastes for network breadth and how it affects health plan selection. I estimate demand for health plans in California’s Marketplace, Covered California. Using 2017 individual enrollment data and provider network directories obtained from Covered California, I develop a geospatial measure of network breadth that reflects the physical locations of households and in-network providers. I find that households are sensitive to network breath in their plan choices, and that they tend to stay with their plan from the previous year (i.e., inertia). Overall willingness to pay (WTP) to switch from a narrow to a broad network plan is $21.94 in monthly premiums. Variation in this WTP by age indicates that a selection mechanism exists whereby older households sort into broader network plans. I also find that Covered California households are highly premium sensitive, which may be a result of plan standardization regulations in Covered California. Furthermore, I find that switching costs, as measured by the willingness to pay to stay in the same plan in a subsequent year, are $437.86 in monthly premiums on average, indicating that inertia impacts plan choice in the individual health insurance market despite relatively high churn and plan exit.