Our empirical analysis uses two different data sources: the RobertWood Johnson Foundation’s 1997 Employer Health Insurance Survey (EHIS) and MEDSTAT MarketScan commercially insured health claims and eligibility information for 1998–1999. We first use the EHIS data to examine turnover patterns and their relationship to firm and employee characteristics. The EHIS data reveal that small firms are very heterogeneous; the heterogeneity concerns workers’ turnover rates, besides workers’ age distribution and other health-related demographic variables. The diversity in job turnover rates across firms has received little attention in the literature on the uninsured; in our dynamic model, its presence exacerbates the adverse job turnover problem. Firms with higher turnover.
