Researchers from Princeton University Report on Findings in Social Science (“Choose the Plan That’s Right for You”: Choice Devolution as Class-Biased Institutional Change in U.S. Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance): Science – Social Science

2022 MAY 18 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators publish new report on social science. According to news reporting out of Princeton University by NewsRx editors, research stated, “This study examines the distributional consequences of U.S. employers’ efforts to devolve responsibility for managing their employees’ medical insurance risk.”

Our news reporters obtained a quote from the research from Princeton University: “The logic of consumer choice has increasingly come to dominate insurance benefit design, requiring that employees learn to be their own actuaries. We ask, to what extent does the individuation of choice (between insurance plans with disparate levels of cost-sharing) alter the social stratification of out-of-pocket (OOP) medical expenditure burdens across socioeconomic status class strata? Our analysis draws on an insurance claims database from a large multi-employer commercial insurer, which includes information on plan offerings and realized OOP expenditure burdens for more than 37 million persons from 2002 to 2012. Consistent with expectations, the results of pooled difference-in-difference event study models reveal that transitions to devolved choice result in modestly greater increases in realized OOP burden among lower socioeconomic status enrollees, compared with the growth among higher-status enrollees.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “However, the magnitude of the increase in the between-class expenditure burden disparity is small in substantive terms.”

For more information on this research see: “Choose the Plan That’s Right for You”: Choice Devolution as Class-Biased Institutional Change in U.S. Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance. Sociological Science, 2022,9(10):221-251. (Sociological Science - https://www.sociologicalscience.com/). The publisher for Sociological Science is Society for Sociological Science.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.15195/v9.a10.

Our news journalists report that more information may be obtained by contacting Adam Goldstein, Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)