on Facebook
on Twitter
on YouTube
Document Information
Do Children of Immigrants Make Differential Use of Public Health Insurance?
If immigrant parents face higher transactions costs of enrolling in Medicaid, and different opportunities in the market for private health insurance, then their responses to becoming eligible for Medicaid are likely to differ from those of native-born parents. This prediction is tested using data about health insurance coverage and the utilization of medical care from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey. The results suggest that focusing on coverage alone will produce misleading assessments of the costs and benefits of expanding Medicaid eligibility for immigrants since among immigrants, eligibility increases utilization of basic services without affecting coverage. Second, the marginal cost of the additional medical services consumed by eligible immigrant children is small. However, the infra-marginal costs of expanding Medicald eligibility to immigrants may be quite large, because as much as a quarter of the cost of providing infra-marginal services is shifted from private to public insurers.
See Also:
Free, downloadable PDF file(s) are available below.
RAND makes an electronic version of this document available for free as a public service.
Use Adobe Acrobat Reader version 7.0 or higher for the best experience.
This product is part of the RAND Corporation unrestricted draft series. The unrestricted draft was a product of the RAND Corporation from 1993 to 2003 that represented preliminary or prepublication versions of other more formal RAND products for distribution to appropriate external audiences. The draft could be considered similar to an academic discussion paper. Although unrestricted drafts had been approved for circulation, they were not usually formally edited or peer reviewed.
Permission is given to duplicate this electronic document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes. Unauthorized posting of RAND PDFs to a non-RAND Web site is prohibited. RAND PDFs are protected under copyright law. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit the RAND Permissions page.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
* RAND research is conducted across divisions, centers, and projects; these organizational components are represented in the "Related RAND Divisions" section above.
Top
RAND® is a registered trademark. Copyright © 1994-2009 RAND Corporation. Last Modified: February 20, 2008 