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Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'health insurance'

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Viewing papers 11 through 17 of 17


  • Working Paper

    Health Insurance and Productivity: Evidence from the Manufacturing Sector

    September 2009

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-09-27

    This paper examines the relationship between employer-sponsored offers of health insurance and establishments' labor productivity. Our empirical work is based on unique plant level data that links the 1997 and 2002 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey-Insurance Component with the 1992, 1997, and 2002 Census of Manufactures. These linked data provide information on employer-provided insurance and productivity. We find that health insurance offers are positively associated with levels of establishments' labor productivity. These findings hold for all manufacturers as well as those with fewer than 100 employees. Our preliminary results also show a drop in health care costs from the 75th to the 25th percentile would increase the probability of a plant offering insurance by 1.5-2.0 percent in both 1997 and 2002. The results from this paper provide encouraging and new empirical evidence on the benefits employers may reap by offering health insurance to workers.
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  • Working Paper

    Employer Health Benefit Costs and Demand for Part-Time Labor

    April 2009

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-09-08

    The link between rising employer costs for health insurance benefits and demand for part-time workers is investigated using non-public data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey- Insurance Component (MEPS-IC). The MEPS-IC is a nationally representative, annual establishment survey from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Pooling the establishment level data from the MEPS-IC from 1996-2004 and matching with the Longitudinal Business Database and supplemental economic data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a reduced form model of the percent of total FTE employees working part-time is estimated. This is modeled as a function of the employer health insurance contribution, establishment characteristics, and state-level economic indicators. To account for potential endogeneity, health insurance expenditures are estimated using instrumental variables (IVs). The unit of analysis is establishments that offer health insurance to full-time employees but not part time employees. Conditional on establishments offering health insurance to full-time employees, a 1 percent increase in employer health insurance contributions results in a 3.7 percent increase in part-time employees working at establishments in the U.S.
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  • Working Paper

    A Comparison of Employee Benefits Data from the MEPS-IC and Form 5500

    September 2008

    Authors: Kristin McCue

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-08-32

    This paper compares data on employers\u2019 health and pension offerings from the two sources: publicly available administrative data from Form 5500 filings and survey data from the Insurance Component of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS-IC). The basic findings are that the 5500 filings cover too few health plans to be very useful as a substitute or supplement to the MEPS-IC measure of whether or not employers offer health insurance. The pension information in the 5500 filings is potentially more useful as a supplement to the MEPSIC for research purposes where additional pension information would be useful in studying employers\u2019 decisions to offer health insurance.
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  • Working Paper

    Using the MEPS-IC to Study Retiree Health Insurance

    April 2006

    Authors: Alice Zawacki

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-06-13

    This paper discusses using the restricted-access Medical Expenditure Panel Survey- Insurance Component (MEPS-IC) to study employer-sponsored retiree health insurance (RHI). This topic is particularly interesting given current events such as the aging of baby boomers, rising health care costs, new prescription drug coverage under Medicare, and changes in accounting standards for reporting liabilities related to RHI offerings. Consequently, employers are grappling with an aging workforce, evaluating Medicare subsidies to employers for offering retiree drug plans, facing rising premium costs as a result of rising health care costs, and trying to show profitability on financial reports. This paper provides technical information on using the MEPS-IC to study RHI and points out data issues with some of the measures in the database. Descriptive statistics are provided to illustrate the types of retiree estimates possible using the MEPS-IC and to show some of the trends in this subject area. Not surprising, these estimates show that employer offers of RHI have declined, greater numbers of retirees are enrolling in these plans, and expenditures for employer-sponsored RHI have been rising.
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  • Working Paper

    Contributions to Health Insurance Premiums: When Does the Employer Pay 100 Percent?

    December 2005

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-05-27

    We identify the characteristics of establishments that paid 100 percent of health insurance premiums and the policies they offered from 1997-2001, despite increased premium costs. Analyzing data from the MEPS-IC, we see little change in the percent of establishments that paid the full cost of premiums for employees. Most of these establishments were young, small, singleunits, with a relatively high paid workforce. Plans that were fully paid generally required referrals to see specialists, did not cover pre-existing conditions or outpatient prescriptions, and had the highest out-of-pocket expense limits. These plans also were more likely than plans not fully paid by employers to have had a fee-for-service or exclusive provider arrangement, had the highest premiums, and were less likely to be self-insured.
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  • Working Paper

    Using Census Business Data to Augment the MEPS-IC

    December 2005

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-05-26

    This paper has two aims: first to describe methods, issues, and outcomes involved in matching data from the Insurance Component of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPSIC) to other business microdata collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, and second to present some simple results that illustrate the usefulness of such combined data. We present the results of linking the MEPS-IC with data from the 1997 Economic Censuses (EC), but also discuss other possible sources of business data. An issue in any linkage is whether the linked sample remains representative and large enough to be useful. The EC data are attractive because, given the survey's broad coverage and large sample, most of the MEPS-IC sample can be matched to it. We use the combined EC/MEPS-IC data to construct productivity measures that are useful auxiliary data in examining employers' health insurance offering decisions.
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  • Working Paper

    New Uses of Health and Pension Information

    January 2002

    Authors: Julia I. Lane

    Working Paper Number:

    tp-2002-03

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