Who really pays for health insurance? The incidence of employer-provided health insurance with sticky nominal wages.
Who really pays for health insurance? The incidence of employer-provided health insurance with sticky nominal wages.
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DOI：
10.1007/s10754-005-6603-5
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发表时间：
2005-03-01
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Sommers, Benjamin D
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Sommers, Benjamin D
本文解决了雇主提供的健康保险领域中的两个看似矛盾的问题：首先，企业一直声称他们承担为员工提供的保险负担，尽管理论和经验证据表明工人承担了全部责任。第二，福利慷慨和雇主支付的保险费的百分比在最近几十年来有所下降，尽管雇主支付的福利相对于工资的税收优惠待遇-标准发病率模型无法解释的趋势。本文提出了一个基于名义工资刚性的修正关联模型，试图解释这些悖论。该模型预测，当名义工资约束时，增加保险费的部分负担将落在企业身上，特别是低工资员工的小公司。作为回应，公司将减少就业，减少福利慷慨，并要求更大的员工保费贡献。使用当前人口调查数据从2000年至2001年，我发现这种工资刚性的证据，并在一段时间内的保费快速增长的低工资保险工人的就业和保费贡献的相关影响。
This paper addresses two seeming paradoxes in the realm of employer-provided health insurance: First, businesses consistently claim that they bear the burden of the insurance they provide for employees, despite theory and empirical evidence indicating that workers bear the full incidence. Second, benefit generosity and the percentage of premiums paid by employers have decreased in recent decades, despite the preferential tax treatment of employer-paid benefits relative to wages-trends unexplained by the standard incidence model. This paper offers a revised incidence model based on nominal wage rigidity, in an attempt to explain these paradoxes. The model predicts that when the nominal wage constraint binds, some of the burden of increasing insurance premiums will fall on firms, particularly small companies with low-wage employees. In response, firms will reduce employment, decrease benefit generosity, and require larger employee premium contributions. Using Current Population Survey data from 2000-2001, I find evidence for this kind of wage rigidity and its associated impact on the employment and premium contributions of low-wage insured workers during a period of rapid premium growth.