Using recent Canadian health survey data, we investigated the effect of socioeconomic status on patients' use of dental services and dental insurance coverage. Our results point to an important socioeconomic gradient in the use of dental services. The probability of receiving any dental care over the course of a year increases markedly with dental insurance, household income, and level of educa...

This article presents the results of an experiment designed to test theoretical predictions about the impact of public compensation schemes and ambiguity on insurance and self-insurance decisions. Consistent with theory, we find that government assistance significantly reduces willingness to pay (WTP) for insurance and self-insurance (compared with a free insurance market). As expected, we also...

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...

• mandatory expansion of Medicaid programs to cover individuals in households with incomes below 133 percent of the federal poverty level ($14,484 for a single person and $29,726 for a family of four in 2010) • a requirement that states develop and run health insurance exchanges through which individuals and small businesses can purchase health care coverage • a provision that large and mid-siz...

The size of adverse selection and moral hazard effects in health insurance markets has important policy implications. For example, if adverse selection effects are small while moral hazard effects are large, conventional remedies for inefficiencies created by adverse selection (e.g., mandatory insurance enrolment) may lead to substantial increases in health care spending. Unfortunately, there i...

ONE YEAR AFTER THE HISTORIC PASSAGE OF THE AFfordable Care Act (ACA), the individual mandate is subject to ongoing scrutiny both by the federal courts and Congress. This provision of the ACA would require most individuals to purchase health insurance, and recent attention has focused on the important legal issues associated with such a mandate. However, far less attention has been devoted to th...