Health Policy Working Group: Jonathan Holmes
Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa
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After a year-long hiatus, the Health Policy Working Group resumes for the spring semester on Wednesday, March 13, 2024, featuring guest speaker Jonathan Holmes, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa.
The Health Policy Working Group brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers and professionals from both Tulane’s Uptown and Downtown campuses to explore critical healthcare policy issues.
Dr. Holmes will present his research: “The Earnings Incidence of Employer-Provided Health Insurance” which is joint with Kurt Lavetti and Tamar Oostrom.
The study provides the first US-based estimates of earnings differentials for health insurance derived from administrative all-payer insurance claims linked to earnings records. By analyzing the effect of employees being added to or dropped from an insurance plan without changing jobs, their research shows an immediate and sustained drop in earnings when an employee becomes the primary beneficiary of a health insurance plan. Workers receive a pay increase when employers stop offering health insurance to their employees. These wage effects cover approximately 30% of the cost of health insurance claims with older workers and those with high predicted health insurance costs having larger compensating wage differentials.
Dr. Holmes will join Tulane’s Department of Economics as a Visiting Assistant Professor next fall.
