Macroeconomic Implications of Health Policy in the United States.

TL;DRAbstract

This dissertation brings health policy forward to the macroeconomic arena and explores how policy reforms impact the U.S. economy and well-being of the people in the long run. This research builds a stochastic overlapping generations (OLG) model and applies it in a dynamic general equilibrium context. This study emphasizes heterogeneity among individuals whose actions ultimately guide the overall economy and calibrates the model based on micro-data. The first essay integrates endogenous insurance purchasing decisions and consumption-saving decisions in the model and compares health policies of universal insurance with and without individual mandates. This essay also investigates a policy that forbids discrimination by insurance companies on the basis of pre-existing conditions. It finds that these health-policy reforms cannot, at the same time, achieve three objectives: improving aggregate well-being, raising the fraction of the insured population, and banning discrimination. The secon

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