Author: Jacob Alex Klerman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Employers' liability
Languages : en
Pages : 5
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Book Description
The proposed Health Security Act provides universal health insurance by extending the current employer-based health insurance financing system. It requires employers to pay approximately 80 percent of the health insurance premium for each of their workers. Experience with other legislation requiring employers to provide benefits to their employees indicates that most of the cost of a mandated benefit is shifted to employees in the form of lower wages. However, for workers without health insurance and with earnings close to the minimum wage, minimum-wage legislation prohibits employers from lowering wages in response to a health insurance mandate. These employers can be expected to respond by cutting employment. Recent evidence from employer reactions to increases in the minimum wage suggests that approximately 100,000 jobs would be lost due to the Health Security Act's employer mandate.
Author: Katherine Baicker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Employer-sponsored health insurance
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
Employer health insurance mandates form the basis of many health care reform proposals. Proponents make the case that they will increase insurance, while opponents raise the concern that low-wage workers will see offsetting reductions in their wages and that in the presence of minimum wage laws some of the lowest wage workers will become unemployed. We construct an estimate of the number of workers whose wages are so close to the minimum wage that they cannot be lowered to absorb the cost of health insurance, using detailed data on wages, health insurance, and demographics from the Current Population Survey. We find that 33 percent of uninsured workers earn within $3 of the minimum wage, putting them at risk of unemployment if their employers were required to offer insurance. Assuming an elasticity of employment with respect to minimum wage increase of -0.10, we estimate that 0.2 percent of all full-time workers and 1.4 percent of uninsured full-time workers would lose their jobs because of a health insurance mandate. Workers who would lose their jobs are disproportionately likely to be high school dropouts, minority, and female. This risk of unemployment should be a crucial component in the evaluation of both the effectiveness and distributional implications of these policies relative to alternatives such as tax credits, Medicaid expansions, and individual mandates, and their broader effects on the well-being of low-wage workers.
Author: United States. Congress. Joint Economic Committee. Republican Staff
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Compulsory health insurance
Languages : en
Pages : 32
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Book Description
Author: Alan B. Krueger
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Employee fringe benefits
Languages : en
Pages : 54
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Book Description
Author: Jacob Alex Klerman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780833022370
Category : Employers' liability
Languages : en
Pages : 19
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Book Description
Employer mandates would provide universal health insurance by extending the current employer-based health insurance financing system. All employees would be required to purchase insurance through their workplace, with employers paying a substantial part of the cost (typically between 50 and 80 percent). These mandates have been opposed on the grounds that they would result in substantial job loss. In fact, experience with other legislation requiring employers to provide benefits to their employees indicates that most of the cost of a mandated benefit is shifted to employees in the form of lower wages. However, for workers without health insurance and with very low earnings, minimum wage legislation prohibits employers from passing on the costs of a mandate by lowering wages. Thus, employers may respond to a mandate by reducing employment of very low-wage workers. Using evidence from recent increases in the minimum wage, the authors estimate that between 100,000 and 275,000 jobs would be lost due to the imposition of an employer mandate. These figures represent less than one-quarter of one percent of all jobs, suggesting job loss is not an important issue in considering the consequences of a mandate.
Author: Jonathan Gruber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Health insurance
Languages : en
Pages : 37
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Book Description
Low rates of health insurance coverage among the non-employed have motivated consideration of policies to subsidize the purchase of insurance for those who are without a job. But there is little evidence on the extent to which coverage differentials between the employed and the non-employed reflect the effects of job loss or merely different underlying tastes for insurance. If the latter, subsidies may not be successful in increasing the rate of insurance coverage among the non-employed. Furthermore, subsidies which lower the costs of non-employment may increase both the incidence and duration of joblessness. We provide new evidence on these issues by analyzing longitudinal data on 25-54 year-old men over the 1983-1989 period. We have four findings of interest. First, even after modelling differences in underlying tastes for insurance, the likelihood of insurance coverage drops by roughly 20 percentage points following job separation. Second, limited subsidization of the cost of insurance through state laws mandating continued access to employer-provided health insurance for the non-employed increases the likelihood of having insurance while without a job by 6.7 percent. Third, these mandates also increase the number of individuals with spells of non-employment and the total amount of time spent jobless. Finally, at least some of this increased non-employment appears to be spent in productive job search as the availability of continuation coverage is related to significant wage gains among those who separate from their jobs.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Employees
Languages : en
Pages : 20
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Book Description
Author: Janet Holtzblatt
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1437922384
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 8
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Book Description
In the U.S., health insurance (HI) coverage is linked to employment in ways that can affect both wages and the demand for certain types of workers. That close linkage can also affect people¿s decisions to enter the labor force, to work fewer or more hours, to retire, and even to work in one particular job or another. This economic brief shows that the overall impact on labor markets (LM) is difficult to predict. Although economic theory and experience provide some guidance as to the effect of specific provisions, large-scale changes to the HI system could have more extensive repercussions than have previously been observed and also may involve numerous factors that would interact ¿ affecting LM in potentially offsetting ways.
Author: June O'Neill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Employee fringe benefits
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309048273
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 381
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Book Description
The United States is unique among economically advanced nations in its reliance on employers to provide health benefits voluntarily for workers and their families. Although it is well known that this system fails to reach millions of these individuals as well as others who have no connection to the work place, the system has other weaknesses. It also has many advantages. Because most proposals for health care reform assume some continued role for employers, this book makes an important contribution by describing the strength and limitations of the current system of employment-based health benefits. It provides the data and analysis needed to understand the historical, social, and economic dynamics that have shaped present-day arrangements and outlines what might be done to overcome some of the access, value, and equity problems associated with current employer, insurer, and government policies and practices. Health insurance terminology is often perplexing, and this volume defines essential concepts clearly and carefully. Using an array of primary sources, it provides a store of information on who is covered for what services at what costs, on how programs vary by employer size and industry, and on what governments doâ€"and do not doâ€"to oversee employment-based health programs. A case study adapted from real organizations' experiences illustrates some of the practical challenges in designing, managing, and revising benefit programs. The sometimes unintended and unwanted consequences of employer practices for workers and health care providers are explored. Understanding the concepts of risk, biased risk selection, and risk segmentation is fundamental to sound health care reform. This volume thoroughly examines these key concepts and how they complicate efforts to achieve efficiency and equity in health coverage and health care. With health care reform at the forefront of public attention, this volume will be important to policymakers and regulators, employee benefit managers and other executives, trade associations, and decisionmakers in the health insurance industry, as well as analysts, researchers, and students of health policy.
