TY - JOUR
T1 - Medicaid insurance in old age
AU - De Nardi, Mariacristina
AU - French, Eric
AU - Jones, John Bailey
PY - 2016/11
Y1 - 2016/11
N2 - 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. (JEL C51, H51, I13).
AB - 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. (JEL C51, H51, I13).
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84994201213&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1257/aer.20140015
DO - 10.1257/aer.20140015
M3 - Article
C2 - 29553207
AN - SCOPUS:84994201213
SN - 0002-8282
VL - 106
SP - 3480
EP - 3520
JO - American Economic Review
JF - American Economic Review
IS - 11
ER -