A distributional assessment of Rhode Island's Catastrophic Health Insurance Plan (CHIP)

Since 1975, Rhode Island has operated a government-sponsored catastrophic health insurance program that is consistent in spirit with several of the national health insurance proposals. An important but often overlooked effect of such a program is its effect on the distribution of income. Actual claims data for the years 1975-79 are available for the Rhode Island program permitting direct estimation of an average benefit per family and an average tax burden per family in each of 12 income classes. This permits an assessment of the program's redistributional effects.