Student Research Panel: New Evidence on the Affordable Care Act
The Affordable Care Act’s numerous provisions have created an abundance of research opportunities in areas including health insurance coverage, benefit design, health care utilization, and costs. This panel presents research into various elements of the law’s implementation, all presented by students in economics and health policy programs. The papers include an analysis of the ACA’s contraception mandate and its effects on out-of-pocket spending and contraception use among young women; a study of the heterogeneity in insurance coverage rates across different subgroups of Latinos (such as Mexicans, Central Americans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans) and how the ACA has impacted these within-group disparities; and a differences-in-differences analysis of how the ACA has affected both costs and patterns of prescription drug usage in Medicaid programs, based on state expansion decisions. The panel will provide an opportunity for up-and-coming health economics students to present novel and rigorous research findings, with experienced faculty researchers serving as discussants on the methods and policy context for these papers.