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Basic versus supplementary health insurance: Access to care and the role of cost effectiveness

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  • Boone, Jan

Abstract

In a model where patients face budget constraints that make some treatments unaffordable without health insurance, we ask which treatments should be covered by universal basic insurance and which by private voluntary insurance. We argue that next to cost effectiveness, prevalence is important if the government wants to maximize the welfare gain that it gets from its health budget. Conditions are derived under which basic insurance should cover treatments that are mainly used by high risk agents with low income.

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  • Boone, Jan, 2018. "Basic versus supplementary health insurance: Access to care and the role of cost effectiveness," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 53-74.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:60:y:2018:i:c:p:53-74
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2018.05.002
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    Cited by:

    1. Yawen Jiang & Weiyi Ni, 2019. "Risk selection into supplemental private health insurance in China," Health Economics Review, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 1-11, December.
    2. Markus Fels, 2020. "Incentivizing efficient utilization without reducing access: The case against cost‐sharing in insurance," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(7), pages 827-840, July.
    3. Rotileanu Adina & Onişor Lucian-Florin, 2021. "Private health insurance customer satisfaction. A consumer behavior exploratory study based on structural equation modeling," Proceedings of the International Conference on Business Excellence, Sciendo, vol. 15(1), pages 650-663, December.
    4. Mona Balesh Abadi & Kevin Devereux & Farah Omran, 2023. "Correcting for transitory effects in RCTs: Evidence from the RAND Health Insurance Experiment," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(1), pages 288-305, February.
    5. Jiang, Yawen & Ni, Weiyi, 2020. "Impact of supplementary private health insurance on hospitalization and physical examination in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Universal basic health insurance; Voluntary supplementary insurance; Public vs. private insurance; Access to care; Cost effectiveness; Moral hazard; Adverse selection;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I13 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Insurance, Public and Private
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health

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