TY  - JOUR
AU  - Gruber,Jonathan
TI  - Covering the Uninsured in the U.S.
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13758
PY  - 2008
Y2  - January 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13758
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13758.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jonathan Gruber
MIT Department of Economics
E52-355
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-8892
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: gruberj@mit.edu
AB  - One of the major social policy issues facing the U.S. in the first decade of the 21st century is the large number of Americans lacking health insurance.  This article surveys the major economic issues around covering the uninsured.  I review the facts on insurance coverage and the nature of the uninsured; focus on explanations for why the U.S. has such a large, and growing, uninsured population; and discuss why we should care if individuals are uninsured.  I then focus on policy options to address the problem of the uninsured, beginning with a discussion of the key issues and available evidence, and then turning to estimates from a micro-simulation model of the impact of alternative interventions to increase insurance coverage.
ER  -