TY  - JOUR
AU  - Colla,Carrie Hoverman
AU  - Dow,William H.
AU  - Dube,Arindrajit
TI  - How Do Employers React to A Pay-or-Play Mandate? Early Evidence from San Francisco
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 16179
PY  - 2010
Y2  - July 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16179
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16179.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Carrie H. Colla
The Dartmouth Institute for
Health Policy and Clinical Practice
Dartmouth Medical School
35 Centerra Parkway
Lebanon, NH 03766
Tel: (603) 650-3521
Fax: (603) 653-0896
E-Mail: carrie.colla@dartmouth.edu

William H. Dow
University of California, Berkeley
School of Public Health
239 University Hall, #7360
Berkeley, CA 94720-7360
Tel: 510/643-5439
Fax: 510/643-6981
E-Mail: wdow@berkeley.edu

Arindrajit Dube
Department of Economics
1030 Thompson Hall
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003
E-Mail: adube@econs.umass.edu
AB  - In 2006 San Francisco adopted major health reform, becoming the first city to implement a pay-or-play employer health spending mandate.  It also created Healthy San Francisco, a “public option” to promote affordable universal access to care.  Using the 2008 Bay Area Employer Health Benefits Survey, we find that most employers (75%) had to increase health spending to comply with the law, yet most (64%) are supportive of the law.  There is substantial employer demand for the public option, with 21% of firms using Healthy San Francisco for at least some employees, yet there is little evidence of firms dropping existing insurance offerings in the first year after implementation.
ER  -