Effects of Insurance Market Regulations: Filling in the Puzzle
State insurance mandates regulate the type of private insurance offerings available to consumers. These mandates are usually created to change how private insurance is offered and improve the coverage of insurance available to consumers. Even so, previous work has found little to weak interaction between mandates and offerings. This session makes the argument that private insurance offerings result from a broader connection between mandates, potential enrollee characteristics, firm size, and the other parts of firm production besides the decision to offer insurance. This session’s papers take on the question of insurance mandates with a more complete picture by including important determinants of private insurance offerings outside of state mandates. The first paper explores the relationship between insurance tax subsidies aimed at self-employed individuals and state mandates on pre-existing conditions. The second paper analyzes how firm size leads to different responsiveness to state mandate incentives. The third paper shows that a large component of how a firm chooses to offer insurance depends on the risk already present in the firm’s production function, especially if state insurance mandates most directly affect the firms’ employees versus non-employee dependents.