Panel: Effects of Public Health Insurance Expansions: Participation, Crowd-Out, and Labor Supply
(Health)

Saturday, November 10, 2012: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM
Hall of Fame (Sheraton Baltimore City Center Hotel)

*Names in bold indicate Presenter

Organizers:  Sarah Hamersma, Center for Policy Research
Moderators:  Timothy Moore, George Washington University and Seth Freedman, Indiana University
Chairs:  Jim Baumgardner, Congressional Budget Office

This session brings together research on public health insurance that addresses its interactions with other insurance markets and the labor market. At its foundation, public health insurance provides both an insurance program for the needy and a set of potentially distortionary incentives. Each paper in this session examines the insurance and/or labor market effects of public health insurance policy parameters such as income limits, eligible groups, or recertification periods. In the first paper in this session, the researchers examine the consequences of children’s health insurance expansions, focusing on understanding participation patterns across subgroups and effects on private insurance coverage. The authors of the second paper examine adult Medicaid expansions, focusing on the insurance effects of raising adult income thresholds in states with varying initial threshold levels. The third paper in the session focuses on the labor supply effects of Medicaid expansions to childless adults, who are a large target group under the Affordable Care Act. Finally, the fourth paper addresses the labor supply effects of gaps in Medicaid eligibility enforcement generated through potentially long recertification periods. Each of these papers provides analysis of policies that are currently implemented or under consideration, and as a group they provide a wealth of insight into how public health insurance policy affects broader insurance and labor markets.

Estimating Heterogeneous Take-up and Crowd-Out Responses to Current Medicaid Limits and Their Nonmarginal Expansions
John Ham, University of Maryland, Serkan Ozbeklik, Claremont McKenna College and Lara Shore-Sheppard, Williams College



Participation and Crowd Out: Assessing the Effects of Parental Medicaid Expansions
Sarah Hamersma, Center for Policy Research and Matthew Kim, University of St. Thomas



The Effect of Public Insurance On the Labor Supply of Childless Adults
Thomas DeLeire, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Laura Dague, Texas A&M University and Lindsey Leininger, Chapin Hall at The University of Chicago




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