Room: Phillips 219
Time: Tue 08:30 AM-10:00 AM

The Effects of Women’s Health Insurance Mandates

Chair: Michael Morrisey (University of Alabama at Birmingham)

Session Description

A state health insurance mandate requires private health insurance to cover certain health care providers, specific benefits, or particular patient populations. Such mandates are quite common requiring, for example, coverage of providers such as chiropractors or nurse midwives, or services such as infertility treatments or mammography screenings. The existing literature has devoted some attention to the labor market, focusing on the potential effects of mandates on wages and employment. There has been little research, however, on the potential health consequences of state health insurance mandates. This session will explore the effects of state specific health insurance mandates on the potential unintended consequences of mandates as well as some labor market effects. The session will focus in particular on mandates that apply to women’s and reproductive health, including mandates for infertility treatments as well as mandated direct access to obstetricians/gynecologists (OB/GYNs). In one study, the authors consider the effect of infertility mandates on infant health measured by infant mortality, recognizing that such mandates could have consequences for birth outcomes. Similarly, in another study, the authors examine the effect of legislation for direct access to OB/GYNs on maternal health behavior during pregnancy as well as infant health outcomes, assuming that direct access impacts the timing and perhaps quality of care for women’s and reproductive health services. Authors in the final paper consider the effect of infertility mandates on the labor market, measured by wages and total employment, to determine if workers indeed value these types of state health mandates.

Key Terms None

Session Organizer: Christine Durrance (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

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Presentations

1. Mandated Direct Access to OB/GYNs & Health of Newborn Babies

   Presenter: Christine Durrance (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

   Discussant: Michael Morrisey (University of Alabama at Birmingham)

2. Infertility Mandates and Infant Mortality

   Presenter: Marianne Bitler (University of California, Irvine)

   Discussant: Kate Bundorf (Stanford University)

3. The Efficiency of a Group-Specific Mandated Benefit Revisited: The Effect of Infertility Mandates

   Presenter: Joanna Lahey (Texas A&M University)

   Discussant: Joseph Price (Brigham Young University)