Working Paper: NBER ID: w18947
Authors: Michael Geruso; Harvey S. Rosen
Abstract: Many employers have implemented dependent verification (DV) programs, which aim to reduce employee benefits costs by ensuring that ineligible persons are not enrolled in their health plan as dependents. We evaluate a DV program using a panel of health plan enrollment data from a large, single-site employer. We find that dependents were 2.7 percentage points less likely to be reenrolled in the year that DV was introduced, indicating that this fraction of dependents was ineligibly enrolled prior to the program's introduction. We show that these dependents were actually ineligible, rather than merely discouraged from re-enrollment by compliance costs.
Keywords: dependent verification; health insurance; employer benefits; enrollment; cost savings
JEL Codes: I13
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Dependent Verification Program (I38) | Reenrollment Rates of Dependents (I23) |
| Dependent Verification Program (I38) | Disenrollment Among Children (I13) |
| Dependent Verification Program (I38) | Disenrollment Among Spouses (J12) |
| Dependent Verification Program (I38) | Identification of Ineligible Dependents (H55) |
| Dependent Verification Program (I38) | Annual Cost Savings per Enrolled Employee (J32) |
| Affordable Care Act (G52) | Effectiveness of DV Programs (C52) |