Retiree Health Benefits

Retiree Health Care Benefits: Data Collection Issues

The aging workforce and improvements in health care services have led to increased interest in the availability of health care benefits to retirees; gathering and tabulating data on this topic can be a challenge. The aging of the baby boom generation and their likely expanded use of health care services are well documented.1 Equally well reported is the debate over the obligation of employers t...

Trends: Trends In Retiree Health Benefits

Based on national surveys of employers from 1988 through 2001 and recent key-informant interviews, this paper examines trends in employer-based retiree health benefits. We assess trends in the availability of coverage to early and Medicare-eligible retirees, the cost of coverage, plan choice and enrollment, prescription drug coverage, and recent changes in plan design. During a period of low he...

Retiree health benefits: trends and outlook.

Implications of health reform for retiree health benefits.

This Issue Brief examines how current health reform legislation being debated in Congress will impact the future of retiree health benefits. In general, the proposals' provisions will have a mixed impact on retiree health benefits: In the short term, the reinsurance provisions would help shore up early retiree coverage and Medicare Part D coverage would become more valuable to retirees. In the ...

The influence of retiree health benefits on retirement patterns

We estimate the effect of employer offers of retiree health benefits (RHBs) on the timing of retirement using a sample of Health and Retirement Study (HRS) men observed over a period of up to 12 years. We hypothesize that the effect of RHBs differs for workers of different ages—a hypothesis we can test now that the main HRS cohort has aged sufficiently. We apply three wellknown panel data estim...