Designing and regulating health insurance exchanges: lessons from Massachusetts.

Employers ’ Use of Health Insurance Exchanges : Lessons from Massachusetts

Designing health insurance exchanges: key decisions.

A cornerstone of health care reform is the establishment of state-level insurance exchanges where individuals and small businesses can purchase health insurance in an online marketplace. States are required to develop an exchange by 2014, or participate in a federal one. The exchanges will help people without employer-sponsored insurance find and choose a health plan to meet their needs. This I...

Using Medicaid/SCHIP to Insure Working Families: The Massachusetts Experience

Massachusetts was the first State to implement a premium subsidy program for employer-sponsored health insurance, using both Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) funding. The Insurance Partnership (IP) provides subsidies directly to small employers, and the Premium Assistance Program provides subsidies to their low-income employees. Approximately 3,500 small firms curr...

Heuristics and Heterogeneity in Health Insurance Exchanges: Evidence from the Massachusetts Connector.

Although health insurance exchanges are a growing source of individual coverage, little is known about consumer behavior on these exchanges. While health insurance exchanges are intended to facilitate competition among insurers and make it easier for consumers to access insurance, understanding how consumers choose insurance plans is necessary for the design of these markets. We characterize de...

Risk Selection Threatens Quality Of Care For Certain Patients: Lessons From Europe's Health Insurance Exchanges.

Experience in European health insurance exchanges indicates that even with the best risk-adjustment formulas, insurers have substantial incentives to engage in risk selection. The potentially most worrisome form of risk selection is skimping on the quality of care for underpriced high-cost patients--that is, patients for whom insurers are compensated at a rate lower than the predicted health ca...