title: Bankruptcy, medical insurance, and a law with unintended consequences.
abstract: Congress passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) in 1986, guaranteeing a standard of medical care to anyone who entered an emergency room. This guarantee made default a more reliable substitute for medical insurance. I construct a tractable structural model of the medical insurance market and find that repealing EMTALA would increase the fraction of the population with insurance while decreasing its price.
authors.affiliation: Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade Commission, Washington, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas G
authors.initials: TG
authors.lastname: Koch
mesh_terms: D016361:Bankruptcy; D004632:Emergency Medical Services / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D007348:Insurance, Health / Q000191:economics* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017059:Models, Econometric; D010360:Patient Transfer / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D014481:United States
keywords: EMTALA. 1.5; adverse selection; bankruptcy; bankruptcy and default; health insurance; medical insurance