Price and the Health Plan Choices of RetireesThomas C. Buchmueller
NBER Working Paper No. 11395 This study analyzes health plan choices of retirees in an employer-sponsored health benefits program that resembles "premium support" models proposed for Medicare. In this program, out-of-pocket premiums depend on when an individual retired and his or her years of service as of that date. Since this price variation is exogenous to unobserved plan attributes and retiree characteristics, it possible to obtain unbiased premium elasticity estimates. The results indicate a significantly negative effect of premiums. The implied elasticities are at the low end of the range found in previous studies on active employees.
The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this.
You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. Published: Buchmueller, Thomas. "Price And The Health Plan Choices Of Retirees," Journal of Health Economics, 2006, v25(1,Jan), 81-101. This paper is available as PDF (518 K) or via email.
|
Contact Us
People
James Poterba, presidentJames Poterba is President of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also the Mitsui Professor of Economics at M.I.T. |
NBER ResearchersResearchers by NBER ProgramComplete NBER Research Family List |
 |
Other People LinksStaffBoard of Directors |