Providing health insurance to the short-term unemployed

This paper assesses the likely effects of proposed federal programs to provide temporary subsidies to unemployed people for purchasing health insurance. A simulation model, using the Survey of Income and Program Participation and data from other sources, was used to quantify various effects of a typical proposal. The model illustrates how changing eligibility rules and subsidy formulas would alter the cost and other measures of program performance. If the plan were fully operational in 1998, about 1.1 million people (including insured dependents) would get at least a month of new insurance sometime during the year. The program would reduce the number of uninsured by less than half a million people.