IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecinqu/v52y2014i3p994-1013.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Taxpayer Willingness To Pay For Health Insurance Reform: A Contingent Valuation Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • KURT LAVETTI
  • KOSALI SIMON
  • WILLIAM D. WHITE

Abstract

type="main" xml:id="ecin12083-abs-0001"> A key criterion for evaluating policies to expand health insurance coverage is weighing the costs of such policies against the willingness of the public to pay for coverage expansions. We use new panel survey data from New York State to estimate residents' willingness to pay (WTP) to expand public insurance coverage. Using a nonparametric double-bounded contingent valuation (CV) approach, we specifically ask residents about their WTP to reduce the rate of uninsurance in the state. Our results imply an aggregate lower-bound WTP of over $2,800 per year to cover one person. We also analyze heterogeneity in WTP by sub-group and changes in individual WTP over time between 2008 and 2010. We find that a large majority of residents are willing to pay additional taxes to reduce the number of uninsured in the state, and that average WTP remained remarkably stable despite the economic downturn and the politically polarized discussions surrounding the Affordable Care Act. Decomposing the changes in individual WTP, we find that economic factors related to the recession, including changes in income and employment status, cannot explain changes in individual WTP, whereas individual changes in political opinions about health insurance reform between 2008 and 2010 are strongly correlated with changes in WTP. (JEL H20, H42, H51, H75, I13)

Suggested Citation

  • Kurt Lavetti & Kosali Simon & William D. White, 2014. "Taxpayer Willingness To Pay For Health Insurance Reform: A Contingent Valuation Analysis," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(3), pages 994-1013, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:52:y:2014:i:3:p:994-1013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ecin.2014.52.issue-3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bosworth, Ryan & Cameron, Trudy Ann & DeShazo, J.R., 2015. "Willingness to pay for public health policies to treat illnesses," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 74-88.
    2. Wei Hsu & Chih-Hao Yang & Wen-Ping Fan, 2021. "A Study of Patients’ Willingness to Pay for a Basic Outpatient Copayment and Medical Service Quality in Taiwan," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(12), pages 1-12, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • H42 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Private Goods
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • I13 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Insurance, Public and Private

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:52:y:2014:i:3:p:994-1013. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.