Recent Studies from University of Miami Add New Data to Insurance (Health Insurance Mandates and Traffic Fatalities): Insurance

2024 JUL 24 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- Researchers detail new data in Insurance. According to news reporting originating in Coral Gables, Florida, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “We investigate whether state health insurance parity laws adopted in the 1990s and 2000s for substance use disorder (SUD) treatment reduce traffic fatalities in the United States. Impaired driving is a major contributing factor to US traffic fatalities.”

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from the University of Miami, “State health insurance parity laws compel private insurers to cover SUD treatment more generously-on par with physical health services. We employ 21 years of administrative data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System. We estimate both two-way fixed-effects regressions and an interaction-weighted estimator that is robust to potential bias attributable to heterogenous and dynamic treatment effects with staggered policy adoption. Our findings indicate that state parity law passage reduces overall traffic fatality rates by 2.8 percent, with larger effects for fatalities that involve alcohol.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “These findings suggest that state regulations requiring private insurers to equitably cover SUD treatment can improve traffic safety.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Health Insurance Mandates and Traffic Fatalities. American Journal of Health Economics, 2024. American Journal of Health Economics can be contacted at: Univ Chicago Press, 1427 E 60TH St, Chicago, IL 60637-2954, USA.

Our news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Michael T. French, University of Miami, Miami Herbert Business Sch, Dept. of Health Management and Policy, Coral Gables, FL 33146, United States. Additional authors for this research include Johanna Catherine Maclean and Ioana Popovici.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1086/724864. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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