The Effect of Health Insurance on Workers' Compensation Filing: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act's Age-Based Threshold for Dependent Coverage

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in ABSTRACTThis paper identifies the effect of health insurance on workers' compensation (WC) filing for young adults by implementing a regression discontinuity design using WC medical claims data from Texas. The results suggest health insurance factors into the decision to have WC pay for discretionary care. The implied instrumental variables estimates suggest a 10 percentage point decrease in health insurance coverage increases WC bills by 15.3 percent. Despite the large impact of health insurance on the number of WC bills, the additional cost to WC at age 26 appears to be small as most of the increase comes from small bills. JEL Classification Codes: I13, J32, J38

Health insurance coverage and health care utilization: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act’s dependent coverage mandate

“…On the other hand, the majority of studies that investigated the impact of the ACA's dependent coverage mandate on various outcomes relies on difference-in-differences (diff-and-diff) type models. These studies use different age ranges particularly for the control group with some including individuals up to 34 years old and find that for people ages 19 through 25, the likelihood of having employer-sponsored health insurance as a dependent rose by up to 7 percentage points, while the likelihood of having any health insurance rose by about 3 percentage points (Dillender, 2015).…”

Does Increased Access to Health Insurance Impact Claims for Workers' Compensation? Evidence from Massachusetts Health Care Reform

“…The interaction of public health insurance with other social insurance programs, like WC, is of crucial importance for policy making, yet these programs are often studied in isolation. The literature has only recently begun to assess the impacts of expansions in health insurance coverage on participation in WC, or on program costs (Dillender 2015;Heaton 2012). Our study expands on existing research in Dillender (2015) by analyzing the impacts of Massachusetts 2006 health care reform on WC claims among working-age adults (as opposed to young adults right around age 26, the ACA's cut-off for dependent coverage) and by studying a sample of injuries and illnesses that may have occurred at work without conditioning on WC receipt.…”

“…Likewise, if medical providers incur additional administrative costs when billing to WC rather than to health insurance, they may discourage patients who have insurance coverage from claiming WC (Leigh and Ward 1997). Existing empirical evidence on this topic is mixed: some studies find no evidence that WC claiming propensity is related to insurance status (Card and McCall 1996;Lakdawalla, Reville, and Seabury 2005), and others find a negative relationship between insurance coverage and WC claims (Dillender 2015;Heaton 2012).…”

Spillover effects of increased health insurance enrollment on workers’ compensation insurance

“…Jones (2013) acknowledges that individuals without health insurance may attempt to claim a nonwork‐related injury as work‐related to gain access to medical treatment and that individuals without health insurance may also utilize WC benefits for a longer period, resulting in higher claims costs. Lakdawalla et al (2007) find that, controlling for differences between employers, health insurance coverage is not significantly associated with WC claim filing after an injury, but contrary to these findings, Dillender (2015) finds evidence that after age 26, when workers are no longer eligible for coverage under their parent's health insurance policies, there is an increase in the number of WC bills. The cause of the increase results from bills related to strains/sprains (i.e., soft tissue injuries) and occupational diseases.…”