{"title":"The Affordable Care Act After a Decade: Industrial Organization of the Insurance Exchanges","authors":"Benjamin Handel,Jonathan Kolstad","doi":"10.1146/annurev-economics-051420-114714","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The regulated insurance exchanges set up in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were designed to deliver affordable, efficient health coverage through private insurers. It is crucial to study the complex industrial organization (IO) of these exchanges in order to assess their impacts during the first decade of the ACA and to project their effects going forward. We revisit the inherent market failures in health care markets that necessitate key ACA exchange regulations and investigate whether they have succeeded in their goals of expanding coverage, creating robust marketplaces, providing product variety, and generating innovation in health care delivery. We discuss empirical IO research to date and also highlight shortcomings in the existing research that can be addressed moving forward. We conclude with a discussion of IO research-based policy lessons for the ACA exchanges and, more generally, for managed competition of private insurance in health care. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Economics, Volume 14 is August 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.","PeriodicalId":47891,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Economics","volume":"30 3-4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.8000,"publicationDate":"2022-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Annual Review of Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-051420-114714","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The regulated insurance exchanges set up in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were designed to deliver affordable, efficient health coverage through private insurers. It is crucial to study the complex industrial organization (IO) of these exchanges in order to assess their impacts during the first decade of the ACA and to project their effects going forward. We revisit the inherent market failures in health care markets that necessitate key ACA exchange regulations and investigate whether they have succeeded in their goals of expanding coverage, creating robust marketplaces, providing product variety, and generating innovation in health care delivery. We discuss empirical IO research to date and also highlight shortcomings in the existing research that can be addressed moving forward. We conclude with a discussion of IO research-based policy lessons for the ACA exchanges and, more generally, for managed competition of private insurance in health care. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Economics, Volume 14 is August 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
期刊介绍:
The Annual Review of Economics covers significant developments in the field of economics, including macroeconomics and money; microeconomics, including economic psychology; international economics; public finance; health economics; education; economic growth and technological change; economic development; social economics, including culture, institutions, social interaction, and networks; game theory, political economy, and social choice; and more.