Crowd-out 10 years later: have recent public insurance expansions crowded out private health insurance?

J Health Econ. 2008 Mar;27(2):201-17. doi: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2007.11.004. Epub 2007 Nov 29.

Abstract

Ten years ago, Cutler and Gruber [Cutler, D., Gruber, J., 1996. Does public health insurance crowdout private insurance? Quarterly Journal of Economics 111, 391-430] suggested that crowd-out might be quite large, but much subsequent research has questioned this conclusion. Our results using improved data and methods clearly show that crowd-out is still significant in the 1996-2002 period. This finding emerges most strongly when we consider family level measures of public insurance eligibility. We also find that recent anti-crowd-out provisions in public expansions may have had the opposite effect, lowering take-up by the uninsured faster than they lower crowd-out of private insurance.

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Child
  • Child Health Services
  • Child Welfare
  • Child, Preschool
  • Cost Sharing
  • Empirical Research
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Infant
  • Infant, Newborn
  • Insurance Coverage / trends*
  • Insurance, Health / statistics & numerical data*
  • Male
  • Medicaid
  • Middle Aged
  • Private Sector / statistics & numerical data*
  • Public Sector / statistics & numerical data*
  • United States