Achieving Universal Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: Addressing Market Failures or Providing a Social Floor?

Katherine Baicker is dean and Emmett Dedmon Professor, University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, Chicago, Illinois. Amitabh Chandra is Ethel Zimmerman Wiener Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, and Henry and Allison McCance Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mark Shepard is Associate Professor, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their email addresses are kbaicker@uchicago.edu, amitabh_chandra@harvard.edu, and mark_shepard@hks.harvard.edu. This paper is based on a manuscript prepared for the Journal of Economic Perspectives. The authors thank the editors and Joe Newhouse for helpful feedback and suggestions, and Jason Furman and Matt Fiedler for sharing historical data on US uninsured rates. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.