TY  - JOUR
AU  - Buchmueller,Thomas C.
AU  - Ohri,Sabina
TI  - Health Insurance Take-up by the Near Elderly
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11951
PY  - 2006
Y2  - January 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11951
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11951.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Thomas C. Buchmueller
Stephen M. Ross School of Business
University of Michigan
701 Tappan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Tel: 734/764-5933
E-Mail: tbuch@umich.edu

Sabina Ohri
Summer Associate
Congressional Budget Office
Ford House Office Building, 4th Floor, Room 415B
Second & D Streets, SW
Washington, DC 20515-6425
Tel: 202/226-2584
Fax: 202/225-3149
E-Mail: sabina.ohri@cbo.gov
AB  - This study examines the effect of price on the demand for health insurance by early retirees between the ages of 55 and 64. The analysis is based on administrative data from a medium sized employer and takes advantage of a natural experiment created by the firm's health insurance contribution policy. The amount the firm contributes toward retiree health insurance coverage depends on when a person retired and her years of service at that date. As a result of this policy, there is considerable variation in out-of-pocket premiums faced by individuals in the data, but this variation is independent of the non-price attributes of the health insurance plans offered, and plausibly exogenous to individual characteristics that are likely to affect the demand for insurance. We find that price has a statistically significant but small effect on the decision to take up coverage. The implied elasticities are very similar to results found in previous studies using very different data.
ER  -