Employer health insurance offerings and employee enrollment decisions

Health Services Research, Oct, 2005 by Daniel Polsky, Rebecca Stein, Sean Nicholson, M. Kate Bundorf

(2.) The [R.sup.2] for these regressions were 0.09 for family premiums, 0.09 for single premiums, 0.07 for family employee contributions, 0.05 for single employee contributions, and 0.07 for plan generosity.

(3.) Alternatively these three variables could be defined using maximums or medians.

(4.) For employees with double health insurance coverage, it is possible for the first two categories to overlap, but we code all individuals with insurance from their employer as accepting the employer's insurance offer regardless of whether they also have insurance from another source.

(5.) Results do not change substantially when alternatives such as maximums or medians are used to define premium, net premium, or generosity.

(6.) The marginal predicted probabilities of changing monthly employee contribution to zero from 26 percent for married employees (M) and 13 percent for singles (S) are -0.004 (M) and -0.042 (S) for own employer, -0.006 (M) and 0.017 (S) for alternative source, and 0.009 (M) and 0.024 (S) for uninsured.

(7.) For an employer who acts alone to reduce employee contributions, the elasticities are different from those calculated because the spouse characteristics would not also go to zero. The elasticity for married workers in this case is -0.051.

Daniel Polsky, Rebecca Stein, Sean Nicholson, and M. Kate Bundorf

Address correspondence to Daniel Polsky, Ph.D., Research Associate Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 123 Guardian Drive, Philadelphia, PA 19101. Daniel Polsky, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, and Rebecca Stein, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, are with the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, Philadelphia. Rebecca Stein, Director of Microeconomics Principles Program, is also with the Economics Department, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Sean Nicholson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, is with the Department of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Sean Nicholson, Ph.D., and M. Kate Bundorf, Ph.D., M.B.A., are also with NBER. Dr. Bundorf is also Assistant Professor of Health Research and Policy, at Stanford University School of Medicine, Standford, CA.