Government mandates and employer-sponsored health insurance: who is still not covered?

Abstract

We characterize employer-sponsored health insurance offering strategies in light of benefit non-discrimination and minimum wage regulation when workers have heterogeneous earnings and partially unobservable demand for (and cost of) insurance. We then empirically examine how earnings and expected medical expenses are associated with low wage workers' ability to obtain insurance before and after enactment of federal benefit non-discrimination rules. We find no evidence that the non-discrimination rules helped low wage workers (especially those with high own or children's expected medical expenses) to obtain insurance.