Recent research by University of Minnesota professors Stephen Parente and Roger Feldman finds that combining the most recent models of consumer-driven health plans with a reform of the tax treatment of health insurance would substantially increase overall health insurance coverage. They estimate that adopting the George W. Bush plan for a standard health deduction in 2009--which levels the playing field between employer-purchased insurance and individual insurance--could reduce the ranks of the uninsured by more than 20 million people. A different universal tax credit proposal by Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and several Senate colleagues would have similarly powerful effects in reducing the ranks of the uninsured. Parente and Feldman also find that better-designed consumer-directed health plans help reduce health care costs. At this event, Parente and Feldman will present findings from their most recent national simulation model of recent health insurance reform options. They have used five years of employer and health plan experience in their study, making it the longest-running economic analysis of consumer-directed health plan design.

Gary Claxton, director of the Kaiser Family Foundation's Health Care Marketplace Project; Anthony Lo Sasso, associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Phil Ellis of the Congressional Budget Office will discuss this research and other early lessons of consumer-driven health experiments.