Transcript COMMENTS ON THE EFFECT OF HEALTH REFORM ON RETIREMENT Kevin Whitman

COMMENTS ON
THE EFFECT OF HEALTH REFORM
ON RETIREMENT
Kevin Whitman
The comments and conclusions in this presentation are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of The Pew Charitable Trusts
Thank You
• The Social Security Administration
• NBER
• The authors
My Focus Today
• Potential ways to expand the research
• Future directions
Additional Outcomes
• The authors focus on retirement and part-time work
• Important outcomes, but older workers may also respond
outside of this framework
• A particular concern is self-employment
Self-Employment
• Declining among older workers in recent years
Source: Heim (2014) using the 1994-2012 CPS ASEC
Self-Employment
• Will health reform reverse this trend?
• Interesting question for the structure of the labor force, but
also for retirement security
• There are potential benefits to self-employment, but also
risks
The Future
• Future research should focus on the future
• Apologies for the tautology
• This study looks at responses in 2014 and early 2015
• A short time frame following health reform’s implementation
• There may not have been enough time to see an effect
The Future
• The authors are up front in acknowledging this issue
• They note that problems during the open enrollment period
and ongoing legal challenges could have made workers
cautious
• An additional obstacle: A lack of knowledge
Health Reform Monitoring Survey
Source: Long and Goin (2015)
Take a Ride with Me
• Where we’re going…the policies have stabilized and new
(informed) expectations exist
When we Arrive
• Let’s assume we see two things
• 1) Hover boards
• 2) Health reform having an effect on retirement
• At that point, we should consider not just the aggregate
effects, but the characteristics of people changing their
connection to the labor force and their outcomes in
retirement
Next Steps
• Good policy relies on us understanding several things on
a more detailed level, including:
• Who’s responding;
• How they’re responding;
• Why they’re responding; and
• What that response means for their economic security
Conclusion
• We are at point of significant policy change
• More changes are likely in the next few decades as we address
Social Security’s projected funding shortfall
• Research should continue to explore what health reform
means for the future
• Not only for the labor force in the abstract, but for the people
involved