经济学院2016年发展经济学研讨会（六）

题目： The effect of Health Savings Accounts on group health insurance coverage

主讲人： 叶巾祁 讲师

举办单位：华中科技大学创新发展研究中心

时间： 2016年10月12日（周三）晚19:00

地点： 经济学院405会议室

This paper presents new empirical evidence on the impact of tax subsidies for Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) on group insurance coverage. HSAs are tax-free health care expenditure savings accounts. Coupled with high deductible health insurance plans (HDHPs), they together represent new health insurance options. The tax advantage of HSAs expands the group health insurance market by making health care more affordable. Using individual level data from the Current Population Survey and exploiting policy variation by state and year from 2004 to 2012,the authorfinds that HSA tax subsidies increase small-group coverage by a statistically significant 2.5 percentage points, although not coverage in larger firms. Moreover, if the tax price of HSA contribution decreases by 10 cents, small-group insurance coverage increases by almost 2 percentage points.The author also finds that for older workers or less-educated workers, HSA subsidies are associated with 2–3 percentage point increase in their group insurance coverage.