The Effect of Health Insurance Benefit Mandates on Premiums
11 Pages Posted: 16 Jul 2012 Last revised: 13 Jan 2013
Date Written: October 29, 2012
Abstract
This paper examines the effects of laws mandating that health insurance cover specific conditions, procedures, providers and beneficiaries. Unlike previous work, this paper considers the market for employer-based health insurance rather than the much smaller individual market, and uses a panel data approach to account for unobserved heterogeneity among states. Using a fixed effects model, I find that the average mandate increases premiums by 0.44-1.11% annually. This implies that new mandates were responsible for 9-23% of all premium increases over the 1996-2011 period.
Keywords: Health Insurance Premiums, Mandates
JEL Classification: I11, I13, I18
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation