We propose: (1) to obtain proprietary data from Medstat for a comprehensive analysis of health costs in large firms, and (2) to obtain data collected by the Canadian government through the Family Expenditure Survey (FEX) that will be used to analyze retirement saving in Canada. The analysis of firm health care costs (subproject 7) requires the purchase of a proprietary longitudinal database on health care plans, utilization, and supplementary information for a set of 45-50 very large firms form Medstat Inc. Medstat, a division of SysteMetrics Inc., specializes in providing health care data management services for approximately 80 clients, most of which are Fortune 500 companies. Medstat's unique claims management services include processing all insurance claims for their clients in a standardized format, clarifying and correcting problems that may arise in the raw data, and maintaining these longitudinal databases for clients. At this time, there is no public or proprietary database that can provide information comparable to that available from Medstat. The principle source of data for the financial status two subproject on the Canadian RRSP program is the Canadian Family Expenditure Survey. This survey has been conducted in 15-17 cities approximately every two years since 1952. National coverage is provided in 1969, 1974, `978, 1982 and 1986. The national samples contain approximately 10-11,000 families. These data will be used to support the cross-section and cohort analyses described more fully in the subproject proposal. A unique feature of these data that will be exploited in the proposed analysis is the measurement of saving """"""""flows"""""""". For all major asset components, the survey measures contributions to ant withdrawals from asset stocks.
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