Layton’s research published in multiple journals

UVA Batten associate professor of public policy and economics Tim Layton, an expert on the economics of health insurance markets, has published several research papers in recent months.

Layton’s work centers on how and why health insurance markets and public health insurance programs (i.e., Medicare and Medicaid) often struggle to produce the quality of coverage that consumers want and the government wants to provide at prices they can afford. 

Papers include:

• In a recent issue of Health Affairs, Layton and his co-authors explore how certain regulations on the pricing of Medicare supplemental insurance policies can help beneficiaries. The paper is titled Medigap Regulations Provide Protections For Beneficiaries, Especially After Health Shocks, But May Raise Premiums. Co-authors are Jingwei Sun, Michael E. Chernew, J. Michael McWilliams, and Boris Vabson.
• The same issue also includes a paper Layton co-wrote titled Medicaid Managed Care: Substantial Shifts In Market Landscape And Acquisitions, 2006–20. Here, he and his student and co-author Bohan Li present new data that show a previously overlooked shift in Medicaid Managed Care insurers away from locally-owned and -operated Medicaid plans to national for-profit insurers over the last two decades.
• The Journal of Public Economics’ July issue includes a paper, The dynamic fiscal costs of outsourcing health insurance – evidence from Medicaid. Layton and his former student Eran Politzer studied the fiscal impacts of outsourcing Medicaid for disabled beneficiaries to private insurers and find that costs are initially flat but then continuously increase over time. 
• In April, Layton and Paul D. Jacobs published their paper, Identifying Coding Intensity in Medicare Advantage Through Switchers, in Health Services Research. They explored differential coding of health risk in traditional Medicare compared with Medicare Advantage, and found that coding “intensity” in the latter led to higher risk scores (and thus higher Medicare costs) than for enrollees in the Traditional Medicare program.