Subsidizing Medical Spending through the Tax Code: Take-Up, Targeting and the Cost of Claiming

I would like to thank Priyanka Parikh for exceptional research assistance, and Rebecca Diamond, Maria Fitzpatrick, William Gale, Lee Lockwood, Ithai Lurie, Grant Miller, Petra Persson, Maria Polyakova, Maya Rossin-Slater, John Shoven, Evan Soltas, Chelsea Swete, and seminar participants at Brown University, Stanford University, University of New Mexico, Public Policy Institute of California, the Brookings Institution, the Penn Leonard Davis Institute, and the NBER Summer Institute for helpful comments. This research was supported by funding from the TIAA Institute. The content, findings and conclusions are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of TIAA or the TIAA Institute. This study has been approved by the Institutional Review Board at Stanford University (#73342). I dedicate this paper to my father, Bipin J. Shah, who was an inspiration for this work. This study was supported by funding from the TIAA Institute. The content, findings and conclusions are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of TIAA, the TIAA Institute, or the National Bureau of Economic Research. Neither the TIAA institute nor any other party had the right to review the paper prior to its circulation.