Health, families and private and public health insurance (JMP)
Abstract: This paper evaluates the welfare consequences of Medicaid expansions targeting low-income children and pregnant women between the late 1980s and 2010 and their effects on private health insurance premiums. By extending public coverage to dependents, these reforms reshaped household insurance decisions and led to significant crowding out of private insurance. Motivated by new evidence on shifts in insurance coverage, family-level dynamics, and medical spending patterns, I develop and estimate a model of household insurance choice that incorporates heterogeneous household composition and health risks, Medicaid eligibility constraints, and endogenous premiums. I find that while these expansions lead to significant crowding out, welfare gains were substantial among low-income households. These gains come from increased consumption and medical treatment among low-income families. I find that the effect on private health insurance prices is small because opposing shifts in the risk profile of enrollees and in the size of insurance plans offset each other in equilibrium.
Medicaid Expansion and Parental Health Insurance
Abstract: This paper examines how Medicaid expansions for children and pregnant women in the late 1980s and early 1990s reshaped parents’ insurance coverage. Using a difference-in-differences design, I find that these expansions significantly reduced parents’ private insurance. For mothers, Medicaid crowded out private coverage, while for fathers, spillover effects increased uninsurance. The expansions account for half the decline in private coverage and a third of the rise in uninsurance in this period. By creating asymmetric household eligibility, the policy unintentionally reduced parental coverage, uncovering a new mechanism contributing to the long-run decline in private coverage and the increase in the uninsured.
Semi-Structural Forecasting Model, with Francisco Arroyo-Mariolli,
Jorge Fornero, and
Roberto Zúñiga.
Working Papers No 866, Central Bank of Chile, 2020
Abstract: The semi-structural gap forecasting (MSEP) model is the new gap model used by the Central Bank of Chile to forecast key macroeconomics variables. This document provides the technical details of this model including equations, estimated parameters and transmission mechanisms. The model has been improved relative to its initial version along several dimensions: (i) The parameters have been estimated with Bayesian methods; (ii) it separates core inflation into tradable and non-tradable inflation, linking each component to fundamental drivers; (iii) it explicitly specifies the empirical relationships between terms of trade and real exchange rate. We found that for a typical monetary policy shocks there are similar effects in comparison with the former MEP model.