Health Insurance Reform in an Experimental Market: Human Subjects, Agents Combined to Study Complex Regulatory Reform Proposals

We used human subjects in an agent-based market architecture to examine nine different experimental markets featuring different health care insurance scenarios. We compared a scenario in which no reforms occurred to different combinations of employer-and individual-mandates, restricted rating, and variations in numbers of choices and requirements that employers pay minimum percentages of their employees´ insurance premiums. We then tracked the performance of stakeholders, including employees and large and small employers, as well as firms in high-profit-margin and low-margin markets and their overall revenues and analyzed the resulting data. We found that employee and individual mandates, separately or combined, are not enough by themselves to improve outcomes for all stakeholders. The results show the vulnerability of small-and low-margin employers and their employees to mandate regimes.