Economists Jen Platania and Steve DeLoach recently presented their paper, “The Output Effects of Employer-based Health Insurance,” at the Southern Economic Association’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., Nov 17-20.
The study argues that the country’s current employer-based health insurance system tends to reduce aggregate employment and increase hours worked per worker. As a result, changing the way health insurance is financed is likely to have important macroeconomic benefits. In particular, this study finds that moving to a single-payer health insurance system could increase GDP by as much as 3%.