Plan generosity in health insurance exchanges: what the Affordable Care Act can teach us about top-down versus bottom-up policy implementation.

The landmark United States healthcare reform law – the Affordable Care Act – provides an opportunity to study the dynamics of implementation for complex, politically contentious policies. Matland’s Ambiguity-Conflict Model suggests that bottom-up models will dominate in such cases. I exploit variati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Public Policy Vol. 37; no. 1; pp. 55 - 84
Main Author: Yarbrough, Courtney R.
Format: Article
Published: Cambridge University Press Mar2017
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: Plan generosity in health insurance exchanges: what the Affordable Care Act can teach us about top-down versus bottom-up policy implementation.
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        au: Yarbrough, Courtney R.
        affil: Department of Public Administration and Policy, University of Georgia, USA
      su:
        Health insurance exchanges
        Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act
        Ambiguity
        Premiums (Retail trade)
        Deductibles (Insurance)
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        subj:
          Health insurance exchanges
          Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act
          Ambiguity
          Premiums (Retail trade)
          Deductibles (Insurance)
      keyword:
        Affordable Care Act
        bottom-up
        policy implementation
        top-down
        Affordable Care Act
        bottom-up
        policy implementation
        top-down
      ab: The landmark United States healthcare reform law – the Affordable Care Act – provides an opportunity to study the dynamics of implementation for complex, politically contentious policies. Matland’s Ambiguity-Conflict Model suggests that bottom-up models will dominate in such cases. I exploit variation across states in the implementation of online health insurance marketplaces to test whether the federal- (top-down) or state-managed (bottom-up) implementation model produced better outcomes. Specifically, the study examines if state, federal or partnership exchanges were most effective at offering generous plans for consumers based on premiums, deductibles and copayments in 2014, the first year of operation. The results unambiguously indicate that state exchanges were most successful. The findings provide evidence for what Matland suspected – that bottom-up models, by providing more discretion to local implementers to adapt to contexts and build coalitions, are superior for high-conflict, high-ambiguity policies.
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      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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