TY  - JOUR
AU  - Sasso,Anthony T. Lo
AU  - Meyer,Bruce D.
TI  - The Health Care Safety Net and Crowd-Out of Private Health Insurance
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11977
PY  - 2006
Y2  - January 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11977
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11977.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Anthony T. Lo Sasso
Health Policy and Administration Division
School of Public Health
University of Illinois at Chicago
1603 W. Taylor
Chicago, IL 60612
E-Mail: losasso@uic.edu

Bruce D. Meyer
Harris School of Public Policy
University of Chicago
1155 E. 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/702-2712
Fax: 773/702-0926
E-Mail: bdmeyer@uchicago.edu
AB  - There is an extensive literature on the extent to which public health insurance coverage through Medicaid induces less private health insurance coverage. However, little is known about the effect of other components of the health care safety net in crowding out private coverage. We examine the effect of Medicaid and uncompensated care provided by clinics and hospitals on insurance coverage. We construct a long panel of metropolitan area and state-level data on hospital uncompensated care and free and reduced price care offered by Federally Qualified Health Centers. We match this information to individual level data on coverage from the Current Population Survey for two distinct groups: children aged 14 and under and single, childless adults aged 18 to 64. Our results provide mixed evidence on the extent of crowd-out. Hospital uncompensated care does not appear to crowd-out health insurance coverage and health center uncompensated care appears to crowd-out private coverage for adults and, in some specifications, children.
ER  -