Michael (Misha) Dworsky is an economist at the RAND Corporation. His research interests are in health economics, labor economics, public finance, and the economics of insurance, and his work at RAND focuses on workers’ compensation, health insurance, disability, and health care utilization. Much of his work applies quasi-experimental research designs to large administrative datasets.
Dworsky has led numerous studies on disability benefits and earnings losses for injured workers in the State of California, including several recent and ongoing studies on workers’ compensation issues for public safety workers. He is also studying how the lack of a coverage mandate affects the Texas workers' compensation market, how temporary workers fare after workplace injuries, and the long-term effects of workplace injury on workers’ earnings and employment.
Dworsky has also studied a range of topics in health economics, including the effect of minimum wage increases on employer-sponsored insurance. He has also coauthored several studies on the impacts of the Affordable Care Act on hospital utilization and other outcomes. He is currently working with all-payer claims databases from several states to study the causes and consequences of transitions in health care coverage, and is using all-payer claims databases to study disability onset and transitions from employer-sponsored insurance to Medicare among non-elderly adults. He is also contributing to RAND's evaluation of the Value-Based Insurance Design (VBID) Model Test in Medicare Advantage. Dworsky received his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2013.
Selected Publications
Michael Dworsky, Carolyn M. Rutter, Industrial Cancers in California's Workers' Compensation System: Evidence on Earnings Losses and Disability Benefits, RAND Corporation (RR-4320)
Michael Dworsky, Denise D. Quigley, Stephanie Rennane, Madeline B. Doyle, Evaluation of the Return-to-Work Fund in California's Workers' Compensation System: Performance to Date and Options for Modification, RAND Corporation (RR-2548), 2018
Michael Dworsky, Nicholas Broten, How Can Workers' Compensation Systems Promote Occupational Safety and Health? Stakeholder Views on Policy and Research Priorities, RAND Corporation (RR-2566), 2018
Michael Dworsky, Carrie M. Farmer, Mimi Shen, Veterans' Health Insurance Coverage Under the Affordable Care Act and Implications of Repeal for the Department of Veterans Affairs, RAND Corporation (RR-1955), 2017
Teryl Nuckols, Craig Conlon, Michael Robbins, Michael Dworsky, Julie Lai, Carol P. Roth, Barbara Levitan, Seth Seabury, Rachana Seelam, and Steven M. Asch, "Quality of Care for Work-Associated Carpal Tunnel Syndrome," Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 59(1), 2017
Gary Pickens, Zeynal Karaca, Eli Cutler, Michael Dworsky, Christine Eibner, Brian Moore, Teresa Gibson, Sharat Iyer, Herbert S. Wong, "Changes in Hospital Inpatient Utilization Following the Affordable Care Act Medicaid Coverage Expansion," Health Services Research, 53(4), 2018
Michael Dworsky, Christine Eibner, The Effect of the 2014 Medicaid Expansion on Insurance Coverage for Newly Eligible Childless Adults, RAND Corporation (RR-1736-RWJF), 2016
Michael Dworsky, Seth A. Seabury, Frank W. Neuhauser, Ujwal Kharel, Roald Euller, Benefits and Earnings Losses for Permanently Disabled Workers in California: Trends Through the Great Recession and Impacts of Recent Reforms, RAND Corporation (RR-1299), 2016
