Premiums

Researchers from the Urban Institute explore possible changes to the tax exclusion of employer-sponsored health insurance premiums as a potential source of financing for health reform.

New brief details the procedure of insurers investigating policyholders’ medical history after a policy has been issued.

House and Senate bills fall short of making COBRA premiums affordable.

New Urban Institute research estimates that only 440,000 kids who are currently eligible for public insurance might be covered privately if their parents received government support to pay a share of their employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) premiums.

This brief explores state buy-in programs for children. Buy-in programs have the potential to play an important role in reaching universal coverage for children, but only if it is coupled with strategies to make the premiums more affordable for families.

Expanding health coverage will involve changes in the premiums and taxes people pay for health insurance and the amounts they pay out-of-pocket for specific health care services.  Payment arrangements must generate sufficient revenue, promote efficiency in health care delivery, assure access to care for people who have low income or are in poor health, and minimize administrative costs and burden. This paper evaluates alternative approaches-including social insurance programs, means-tested premium assistance, and income-related cost sharing-according to these criteria.

This paper shows that all countries applying risk-adjusted premium subsidies have taken the form of risk equalization among insurers.

From 2000 to 2002, researchers from the Urban Institute, Washington, analyzed data from the long-running National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (the survey) to examine the question of whether employers pass on the cost of health insurance to their workers by offering them lower wages.

The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that conducts research on social and economic issues.

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