Assoc. Prof. Jeffrey Clemens, Ph.D.

Impact of US public health insurance

The US health system is unique with respect to both its high levels of spending and its patchwork of public and private sources of insurance coverage. Jeffrey Clemens has conducted research on key dimensions of the relationship between public and private insurance in the United States. His work shows that the effects of public insurance arrangements extend well beyond the outcomes they target directly. He has found, for example, that the federal Medicare program’s payment rates exert substantial influence on contracting between physicians and private insurers. Similarly, the coverage decisions of state Medicaid programs can significantly shape the selection pressures that emerge within private insurance markets. Further, the incentives created by public insurance arrangements can shape the health system’s long-run trajectory by influencing both the direction and pace of medical innovation.
Jeffrey Clemens’s research interests extend across a range of topics in public, health, and labor economics. In addition to studying the US health sector, his research has analyzed the economics of state and local government finances and the effects of the minimum wage. In a series of ongoing projects, Mr. Clemens and co-authors are analyzing the effects of recent minimum wage changes enacted by US states.
While visiting CES, Jeffrey Clemens will deliver three lectures on the theme of “Public Policy and the US Health Sector.”
Jeffrey Clemens is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research and an affiliate of the Economic Self-Sufficiency Policy Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine. He is currently an associate editor at the Journal of Health Economics and American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. He has previously held visiting positions at Stanford University and the University of Texas at Austin. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 2011 and his BA from Harvard College in 2005.