Date and Time
October 27, 2004
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM

Availability
Open to the public
No RSVP required

Speaker
M. Kate Bundorf - Stanford University

Americans are increasingly overweight or obese. Obese individuals tend to be sicker and spend more on health care, raising the question of who bears the burden of obesity-related healthcare costs. This question is particularly interesting among those with group coverage through an employer, the primary source of insurance for Americans under age 65, given the lack of explicit risk adjustment of individual health insurance premiums in this market. In this Research in Progress seminar, Kate Bundorf will present a study that examined the incidence of the healthcare costs of obesity among full-time workers, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The researchers found that the incremental healthcare costs associated with obesity are passed on to obese workers with employer-sponsored health insurance in the form of lower cash wages. Bundorf will discuss the implications of these findings for research and policy.