@techreport{NBERw18105,
 title = "Bankruptcy as Implicit Health Insurance",
 author = "Neale Mahoney",
 institution = "National Bureau of Economic Research",
 type = "Working Paper",
 series = "Working Paper Series",
 number = "18105",
 year = "2012",
 month = "May",
 doi = {10.3386/w18105},
 URL = "http://www.nber.org/papers/w18105",
 abstract = {This paper examines the implicit health insurance households receive from the ability to declare bankruptcy. Exploiting cross-state and within-state variation in asset exemption law, I show that uninsured households with greater seizable assets make higher out-of-pocket medical payments, conditional on the amount of care received. In turn, I find that households with greater wealth-at-risk are more likely to hold health insurance. The implicit insurance from bankruptcy distorts the insurance coverage decision. Using a microsimulation model, I calculate that the optimal Pigovian penalties are similar on average to the penalties under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).},
}