The tax code, employer-sponsored insurance, and the distribution of tax subsidies

Using Taxes to Reform Health Insurance: Pitfalls and Promises

Volumn , Issue , 2008, Pages 36-56

  Burman, Leonard E ^a   Garrett, Bowen ^a   Khitatrakun, Surachai ^a  

^a URBAN INSTITUTE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 71849114359     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Chapter

References (24)

1. John P. Sommers, "Offer Rates, Take-Up Rates, Premiums, and Employee Contributions for Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance in the Private Sector for the 10 Largest Metropolitan Areas, 2004", Statistical Brief 150 (Rockville, Md.: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2006).
2. Michael Rothschild and Joseph Stiglitz, "Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information", Quarterly Journal of Economics 90, no. 4(1976):629-50.
3. Joseph P. Newhouse, "Reimbursing Health Plans and Health Providers: Efficiency in Production versus Selection", Journal of Economic Literature 34(1996):1236-63.
4. Mark A. Hall, "The Structure and Enforcement of Health Insurance Rating Reforms", Inquiry 37(Winter 2000):376-88.
5. M. Susan Marquis and Melinda B. Buntin, "How Much Risk Pooling Is There in the Individual Insurance Market?" Health Services Research 41, no. 5(2006):1782-800.
6. Mark V. Pauly, "The Economics of Moral Hazard: Comment", American Economic Review 58, no. 3, part 1(June 1968):531-37.
7. Joseph P. Newhouse, "Medical Care Costs: How Much Welfare Loss?" Journal of Economic Perspectives 6, no. 3(1992):3-21.
8. Mancur Olson, A New Approach to the Economics of Health Care (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1982).
9. David Cutler, "Market Failure in Small Group Health Insurance", Working Paper 4879 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1994).
10. Mark Pauly and Bradley Herring, Pooling Health Insurance Risks (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1999).
11. Alan C. Monheit, Len M. Nichols, and Thomas M. Selden, "How Are Net Health Insurance Benefits Distributed in the Employment-Related Market?" Inquiry 32(Winter 1995):379-91.
12. Richard Thaler, "Saving and Mental Accounting", in Choices over Time, edited by George Loewenstein and Jon Elster (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992).
13. Mark Pauly and Bradley Herring, "Expanding Coverage via Tax Credits: Trade-Offs and Outcomes", Health Affairs 20, no. 1(2001):9-26.
14. Congressional Budget Office, The Tax Treatment of Employment-Based Health Insurance (Government Printing Office, 1994).
15. Philip F. Cooper and Barbara Steinberg Schone, "More Offers, Fewer Takers for Employment-Based Health Insurance: 1987 and 1996", Health Affairs 16, no. 6(1997):142-49.
16. Lisa Clemans-Cope and Bowen Garrett, "Changes in Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Sponsorship, Eligibility, and Participation: 2001 to 2005" (Washington: Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, 2007).
17. See www.taxpolicycenter.org/t07-0086.
18. Some people's incomes are below the filing threshold simply because their health insurance premiums are excluded from income. For example, an individual earning $8, 950 in 2008 had no taxable income (www.taxpolicycenter.org/ taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?docid=474).
19. Martin Feldstein and Andrew Samwick, "Social Security Rules and Marginal Tax Rates", National Tax Journal 45, no. 1(1992):1-22.
20. Greg Leiserson, "Income Taxes and Tax Rates for Sample Families, 2006" (www.taxpolicycenter.org/uploadedpdf411402-sample-families.pdf).
21. Jonathan Gruber and Michael Lettau, "How Elastic Is the Firm's Demand for Health Insurance?" Journal of Public Economics 88, nos. 7-8(2004):1273-93.
22. Mark Stabile, "The Role of Tax Subsidies in the Market for Health Insurance", International Tax and Public Finance 9, no. 1(2002):33-50.
23. Anne B. Royalty, "Tax Preferences for Fringe Benefits and Workers' Eligibility for Employer Health Insurance", Journal of Public Economics 75, no. 2(2000):209-27.
24. Sherry Glied, "Is Something Better than Nothing? Health Insurance Expansions and the Content of Coverage", in Frontiers in Health Policy Research, vol. 6, edited by D. Cutler and A. Garber (MIT Press, 2003).