Employer Vs. Individual Health Insurance Under The Affordable Care Act
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- An unintended consequence in the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has resulted in millions of employees and their families not having access to affordable health insurance. This occurs because the definition of affordable insurance in the ACA in regards to employer-provided insurance only pertains to self-only premium contributions rather than family contributions, resulting in families being unable to access subsidies on the exchanges set up by the ACA. By looking at two case studies of actual companies and setting up a model to compare the health insurance cost of employer-provided insurance with the cost of individual insurance through the exchanges, this paper determines that the employer mandate has a negative impact on low and middle income employees’ abilities to obtain affordable health care insurance for themselves and their dependents and spouses. It is also shown that employers with a majority of low and middle-income workers could benefit from dropping employer coverage and having the employees obtain coverage through the individual insurance exchanges. However, because of the employer mandate, this benefit diminishes for large employers, which has created a two tiered benefit system, where employees of larger companies have significantly less opportunity to obtain affordable insurance for themselves and their families than employees of small companies. This paper suggests that significant changes need to be made to the ACA to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health insurance.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 2015 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Johnson, Olivia |
|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Duggan, Mark |
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Department of Economics |
Subjects
| Subject | Stanford Department of Economics and health care reform |
|---|---|
| Subject | affordability |
| Subject | employer-sponsored health insurance |
| Subject | affordable care act |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- Use and reproduction
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Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Johnson, Olivia. (2015). Employer Vs. Individual Health Insurance Under The Affordable Care Act. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/tc750gt9147
Collection
Stanford University, Department of Economics, Honors Theses
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