American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Medicaid Insurance in Old Age
American Economic Review
vol. 106,
no. 11, November 2016
(pp. 3480–3520)
Abstract
The old age provisions of the Medicaid program were designed to insure retirees against medical expenses. We estimate a structural model of savings and medical spending and use it to compute the distribution of lifetime Medicaid transfers and Medicaid valuations across currently single retirees. Compensating variation calculations indicate that current retirees value Medicaid insurance at more than its actuarial cost, but that most would value an expansion of the current Medicaid program at less than its cost. These findings suggest that for current single retirees, the Medicaid program may be of the approximately right size.Citation
De Nardi, Mariacristina, Eric French, and John Bailey Jones. 2016. "Medicaid Insurance in Old Age." American Economic Review, 106 (11): 3480–3520. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20140015Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- H51 National Government Expenditures and Health
- I13 Health Insurance, Public and Private
- I18 Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
- I38 Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty: Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
- J14 Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination