Amitabh Chandra

Economic Vulnerability of Households With Essential Workers

JAMA · 2020 · 83 citations

This study uses 2018 national survey data to characterize the proportion of essential workers in the US overall and living in economically vulnerable households, defined as income <$40 000 or at least 1 member uninsured or older than age 65.

The Health Costs of Cost-Sharing

2021 · 68 citations

The design of health insurance can cause large, abrupt, and arbitrary changes in drug prices. We use this fact to study what happens to patients' health when they stop taking their drugs. Thanks to a quirk in Medicare's drug coverage, 65-year-olds are as-if-randomly assigned a budget-a spending limit on drugs, beyond which they are responsible for 100% of the cost-as a function of their birth month. We find that an exogenous $100 per month decrease in this budget (a 24.4% change) causes mortalit…

What Can Economics Say about Alzheimer’s Disease?

Journal of Economic Literature · 2023-06-01 · 26 citations

Alzheimer's disease (AD) affects one in ten people aged 65 or older and is the most expensive disease in the United States. We describe the central economic questions raised by AD. Although there is overlap with the economics of aging and health, the defining feature of the "economics of Alzheimer's disease" is an emphasis on choice by cognitively impaired patients that affects health and financial well-being, and situations in which dynamic contracts between patients and caregivers are useful b…

Comprehensive measurement of biopharmaceutical R&D investment

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery · 2024-08-06 · 18 citations

Achieving Universal Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: Addressing Market Failures or Providing a Social Floor?

The Journal of Economic Perspectives · 2023-05-01 · 14 citations

The United States spends substantially more on health care than most developed countries, yet leaves a greater share of the population uninsured. We argue that incremental insurance expansions focused on addressing market failures will propagate inefficiencies and will fail to facilitate the active policy decisions needed to achieve socially optimal coverage. By instead defining a basic bundle of services that is publicly financed for all, while allowing individuals to purchase additional covera…