Date of Award
7-2023
Degree Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)
Department
Jack Welch College of Business & Technology
Dissertation Supervisor
Dr. Khawaja Mamun
Committee Member
Dr. Hiranya Nath
Committee Member
Dr. Shifat Akhtar
Abstract
The debate over whether healthcare is a necessity or a luxury has sparked divergent findings among healthcare researchers. While some have gauged individual income elasticities, others have employed national or cross-national data to discern these elasticities. This paper contributes to this scholarly discourse by presenting fresh insights derived from a panel encompassing 50 US states from 1990 to 2020. The study investigates the impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) on healthcare elasticity, utilizing both parametric and nonparametric models. Initial estimations using the Pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) approach reveal elasticity coefficients above unity. However, estimations utilizing the Fully Modified OLS and the Dynamic OLS methodologies unveil a nuanced perspective: healthcare emerges as a luxury in the pre-ACA era, while post-ACA implementation transforms into a necessity. The panel co-integration and VECM models are used to examine the short- and long-run relationship between the variables. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that the ACA’s effects resonate with a substantial reduction of approximately fifty percent in the uninsured rate across the United States. This reduction, in turn, has the consequential effect of attenuating expenditure growth among states over the span of a decade while concurrently curbing medical debt by an impressive figure exceeding six billion dollars. These findings contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the evolving nature of healthcare’s role in societal well-being, particularly in the context of transformative policy interventions like the ACA.
Recommended Citation
Asante,D. (2023). Healthcare in the United States: Necessity or luxury? analysis of the impact of the affordable care act on elasticity of healthcare expenditure. Jack Welch College of Business & Technology dissertation, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield CT. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/wcob_theses/38/
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Included in
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Comments
Submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Business Administration in Finance Sacred Heart University, Jack Welch College of Business and Technology, Sacred Heart University
Dissertation Number DBA07/2023