Download or read book Tax Subsidies for Expanding Health Insurance Coverage written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An issue of continuing concern to Congress is the number of Americans who lack health insurance coverage. In 2001, an estimated 41.2 million Americans were uninsured for the entire year, 99% of whom were under age 65. The number of nonelderly uninsured rose each year from 1987 to 1998 and then declined in both 1999 and 2000, before increasing again in 2001. In response to the increase in the uninsured population, policymakers at the state and federal levels of government have been searching for effective, affordable, and politically feasible ways to expand access to health insurance coverage. While a variety of proposed solutions have been examined and debated, recent Congresses have shown a growing interest in tax-based approaches. In the 107th Congress, the Trade Act of 2002 established a refundable and advanceable tax credit for the purchase of qualified health insurance by individuals who lose their jobs because of foreign trade. A number of proposals to create tax subsidies for the expansion of health insurance coverage have surfaced in the 108th Congress, including measures to create two new tax-preferred health savings accounts (H.R. 2596 as incorporated into H.R. 1) and tax credits for small employers that provide health insurance coverage for eligible employees (H.R. 450, S. 10, S. 53, S. 86, and S. 414). This report summarizes what is known abut the factors shaping the costeffectiveness of tax subsidies for expanding health insurance coverage. In doing so, it reviews the principal findings of recent studies assessing the cost-effectiveness of a variety of proposed subsidies, many of which have been considered in recent Congresses. The report will be updated or revised to reflect important legislative activity, or to incorporate significant new research findings on the use of tax policy to improve health insurance coverage. Tax policy can influence the demand for health insurance by altering its after-tax cost and terms of coverage. If the principal aim of policymakers is to expand health insurance coverage at a politically acceptable cost through the use of new tax subsidies, then certain factors would be critical in designing such subsidies. One is the type of subsidy being offered. Tax deductions are more valuable to individuals in higher tax brackets than those in lower tax brackets, but the vast majority of uninsured households fall in the lower brackets. Moreover, non-refundable tax credits for the purchase of health insurance may have little impact because nearly half of uninsured households have no federal income tax liability. Another factor to consider is who would be eligible for the tax subsidy. The cost per newly insured appears to depend critically on how narrowly a subsidy is targeted. Likely targets include low-wage firms, low-income workers whose employers do not offer health insurance, and all individuals who are ineligible for public or employer-provided insurance. Other important factors shaping the efficacy of proposed tax incentives to expand health insurance coverage include the type of health insurance policies eligible for the incentives, the shares of individual and family premiums they cover, and their ultimate policy objectives.

Download or read book Using Taxes to Reform Health Insurance written by Henry Aaron and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-10-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Brookings Institution Press and Urban Institute publication Few people realize that one of the nation's largest health programs runs through the tax system. Reformers of all stripes propose to modify current tax rules as part of larger programs to increase coverage and control costs. Is the current system working? Will tax-based reforms achieve their goals? Several of the nation's foremost experts on taxation and health policy address these questions in Using Taxes to Reform Health Insurance, a joint product of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and the American Tax Policy Institute. Led by respected economists Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution and Leonard Burman of the Urban Institute, contributors examine the role taxes currently play, the likely effects of recently introduced health savings accounts, the challenges of administering major subsidies for health insurance through the tax system, and options for using the tax system to expand health insurance coverage. No taxpayer or consumer of health care services can afford to ignore these issues.

Download or read book Tax Subsidies for Expanding Health Insurance Coverage written by Gary Guenther and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Health Care Utilization as a Proxy in Disability Determination written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2018-04-02 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Social Security Administration (SSA) administers two programs that provide benefits based on disability: the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. This report analyzes health care utilizations as they relate to impairment severity and SSA's definition of disability. Health Care Utilization as a Proxy in Disability Determination identifies types of utilizations that might be good proxies for "listing-level" severity; that is, what represents an impairment, or combination of impairments, that are severe enough to prevent a person from doing any gainful activity, regardless of age, education, or work experience.

Download or read book Expanding Health Insurance Coverage and Controlling Costs for Health Care written by Douglas W. Elmendorf and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2009-09 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Testimony on the opportunities and challenges that the Congress faces in pursuing two major policy goals: (1) expanding health insurance coverage, so that more Americans receive appropriate health care without undue financial burden; and (2) making the health care system more efficient, so that it can continue to improve Americans¿ health but at a lower cost in both the public and private sectors. Both are complex endeavors in their own right, and interactions and trade-offs between them may arise.

Download or read book Tax Subsidies for Health Insurance written by Jonathan Gruber and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The continued rise in the number of non-elderly Americans without health insurance has led to considerable interest in tax-based policies to raise the level of insurance coverage. This paper describes a detailed microsimulation model that has been developed to evaluate such tax-based polices, and its findings for the impact of polices on government costs and insurance coverage. I find that while tax subsidies could significantly increase insurance coverage, even very generous tax policies could not cover more than a sizable minority of the uninsured population. But there are several design features which can clearly make tax policy more effective: using tax credits rather than deductions; making credits refundable; and addressing the timing mismatch between when insurance purchases are made and tax refunds are received. I also document a clear tradeoff between the scope of tax subsidies and their efficiency.

Download or read book Federal Tax Incentives for Health Insurance written by Allegra N. Kim and published by California State Library. This book was released on 2007 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Tax Subsidies for Medical Care written by United States. Congressional Budget Office and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Private Health Insurance written by U.s. Government Accountability Office and published by . This book was released on 2017-08-04 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Why GAO Did This StudyThe HCTC pays 72.5 percent of health plan premiums for certain workers who lost their jobs due to foreign import competition and for certain retirees whose pensions from their former employers were terminated and are now paid by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. A small share of individuals who are potentially eligible for the HCTC participate. In 2010 there were 43,864 participants and 469,168 nonparticipants. The HCTC program will expire at the end of 2013 when premium tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies become available to eligible individuals who purchase health plans through health insurance exchanges under PPACA. PPACA also expands Medicaid eligibility to nonelderly individuals who meet specific income requirements to the extent that states choose to implement this provision. Therefore, the costs for health plans and coverage available to individuals potentially eligible for the HCTC will change when the HCTC expires.This report examines (1) how the HCTC's expiration and the implementation of the PPACA premium tax credit, cost-sharing subsidies, and Medicaid expansion will affect HCTC participants and nonparticipants, and (2) how the coverage that will be available through the PPACA exchanges compares to HCTC participants' health plan coverage. GAO analyzed 2010 HCTC program data and individual tax filer data. GAO also compared the services and actuarial values of the plans that"

Download or read book Health Insurance written by U S Government Accountability Office (G and published by BiblioGov. This book was released on 2013-06 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Various approaches have been proposed to increase private and public health care coverage of uninsured persons. The success of these proposals will depend on several key factors. The impact of tax subsidies on promoting private health insurance will depend on whether the subsidies reduce premiums enough to induce uninsured low-income individuals to buy health insurance and on whether these subsidies can be made available at the time the person needs to pay premiums. The effectiveness of public program expansions will depend on states' ability and willingness to use any new flexibility to cover uninsured residents as well as develop effective outreach to enroll the targeted populations. Although crowd-out is a concern with any of the approaches, some degree of public funds going to those currently with private health insurance may be inevitable to provide stable health coverage for some of the 42 million uninsured Americans.

Download or read book Incentive less The Effectiveness of Tax Credits and Cost Sharing Subsidies in the Affordable Care Act written by Jesse Hinde and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) introduced several new policies in 2014, including an individual mandate, expanded Medicaid eligibility, and subsidized private coverage. Private subsidies include advance premium tax credits (APTCs) and cost-sharing reductions (CSRs). Individuals gain eligibility for APTCs and CSRs at 100% (138% in Medicaid expansion states) of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), lose eligibility for CSRs at 250% FPL, and lose eligibility for the APTCs at 400% FPL. Using the Current Population Survey (CPS) and a regression discontinuity design, this study exploits the exogenous differences in subsidy eligibility in 2014 at three cutoffs to identify the separate and combined effects of the APTCs and CSRs on private insurance coverage. I estimate a 4.8 to 5.4 percentage point increase in private insurance coverage just above 138% FPL in Medicaid expansion states and a smaller effect above 100% FPL in non-expansion states attributable to the combined incentives. I calculate a demand elasticity for health insurance of -0.65 to -0.58, which is higher than most estimates in the literature, suggesting low-income individuals may be relatively more price responsive. There is no evidence of an effect on private health insurance at 250% FPL, attributable solely to the CSRs, and suggestive effects at 400% FPL, attributable to only the APTCs. Coverage increases do not appear to be driven by adverse selection, and there is no evidence of crowding-out or income manipulation around the cutoffs. APTC and CSR levels would need to be raised at higher incomes to induce more participation.

Download or read book Expanding Access to Health Care written by Terry F. Buss and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. health care system faces well-known problems: 47 million people without health insurance, rapidly rising costs that consume 16 percent of the country's economic output, and widely uneven quality of care. Even many people with coverage are experiencing serious problems paying for the rapidly rising costs of health care and insurance.This book - a joint product of the National Academy of Public Administration and the National Academy of Social Science - undertakes a sweeping analysis of the management and administrative issues that arise in expanding health care coverage. The book identifies the core administrative functions that need to be performed in assuring access to health coverage, describes how these functions are performed at present and under proposed alternatives, draws lessons from experience in the U.S. and abroad, and assesses suggested administrative approaches designed to facilitate the improvement and expansion of health care coverage.Adequate health care is one of today's most crucial domestic policy concerns. "Expanding Access to Health Care" is designed to bring together in one place some of the best thinking on the subject, not as an exercise in advocacy, but rather to lay out the issues in a balanced way so that policymakers, researchers, and citizens can better understand the complex details of health care reform.

Download or read book Federalism and Health Policy written by Alan Weil and published by The Urban Insitute. This book was released on 2003 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The balance between state and federal health care financing for low-income people has been a matter of considerable debate for the last 40 years. Some argue for a greater federal role, others for more devolution of responsibility to the states. Medicaid, the backbone of the system, has been plagued by an array of problems that have made it unpopular and difficult to use to extend health care coverage. In recent years, waivers have given the states the flexibility to change many features of their Medicaid programs; moreover, the states have considerable flexibility to in establishing State Children's Health Insurance Programs. This book examines the record on the changing health safety net. How well have states done in providing acute and long-term care services to low-income populations? How have they responded to financial incentives and federal regulatory requirements? How innovative have they been? Contributing authors include Donald J. Boyd, Randall R. Bovbjerg, Teresa A. Coughlin, Ian Hill, Michael Housman, Robert E. Hurley, Marilyn Moon, Mary Beth Pohl, Jane Tilly, and Stephen Zuckerman.

Download or read book Health Care Tax Credits to Decrease the Number of Uninsured written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Health Insurance Options written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means. Subcommittee on Health and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Coverage Matters written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-10-27 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roughly 40 million Americans have no health insurance, private or public, and the number has grown steadily over the past 25 years. Who are these children, women, and men, and why do they lack coverage for essential health care services? How does the system of insurance coverage in the U.S. operate, and where does it fail? The first of six Institute of Medicine reports that will examine in detail the consequences of having a large uninsured population, Coverage Matters: Insurance and Health Care, explores the myths and realities of who is uninsured, identifies social, economic, and policy factors that contribute to the situation, and describes the likelihood faced by members of various population groups of being uninsured. It serves as a guide to a broad range of issues related to the lack of insurance coverage in America and provides background data of use to policy makers and health services researchers.

Download or read book Medical and Dental Expenses written by and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: