IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pubfin/v47y2019i4p662-678.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evading the Catastrophic Costs of Nursing Home Care: A Theoretical Inquiry

Author

Listed:
  • Gideon Yaniv

Abstract

While many countries operate publicly funded programs to help care-needing elderly people finance the catastrophic costs of nursing home care, eligibility to public assistance may be means tested. To qualify for a means-tested program, applicants must first exhaust (spend down) their financial assets on privately paying for nursing home care, thereby wiping out their lifetime savings and children’s inheritance. They may naturally consider the possibility of hiding assets from the health agency, consequently shifting the financial burden to taxpayers. The present article adjusts two classical tax evasion models to capture the decision to evade the costs of nursing home care, focusing on the implications on the evaded costs and the program’s deficit of attempting to cope with the escalating costs of nursing home care by imposing a cost-sharing premium on the applicants’ adult children. Some insights on the socially optimal level of the cost-sharing premium are finally discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Gideon Yaniv, 2019. "Evading the Catastrophic Costs of Nursing Home Care: A Theoretical Inquiry," Public Finance Review, , vol. 47(4), pages 662-678, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:47:y:2019:i:4:p:662-678
    DOI: 10.1177/1091142118817882
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1091142118817882
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1091142118817882?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sloan, Frank A & Norton, Edward C, 1997. "Adverse Selection, Bequests, Crowding Out, and Private Demand for Insurance: Evidence from the Long-Term Care Insurance Market," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 201-219, December.
    2. Brown, Jeffrey R. & Finkelstein, Amy, 2007. "Why is the market for long-term care insurance so small?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(10), pages 1967-1991, November.
    3. Jeffrey R. Brown & Amy Finkelstein, 2008. "The Interaction of Public and Private Insurance: Medicaid and the Long-Term Care Insurance Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 1083-1102, June.
    4. Mellor, Jennifer M., 2001. "Long-term care and nursing home coverage: are adult children substitutes for insurance policies?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 527-547, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sergi Jiménez‐Martín & José M. Labeaga‐Azcona & Cristina Vilaplana‐Prieto, 2016. "Interactions between Private Health and Long‐term Care Insurance and the Effects of the Crisis: Evidence for Spain," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(S2), pages 159-179, November.
    2. Tennyson, Sharon & Yang, Hae Kyung, 2014. "The role of life experience in long-term care insurance decisions," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 175-188.
    3. Lambregts, Timo R. & Schut, Frederik T., 2020. "Displaced, disliked and misunderstood: A systematic review of the reasons for low uptake of long-term care insurance and life annuities," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 17(C).
    4. Martin Eling & Omid Ghavibazoo, 2019. "Research on long-term care insurance: status quo and directions for future research," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 44(2), pages 303-356, April.
    5. Christophe Courbage & Peter Zweifel, 2011. "Two-sided intergenerational moral hazard, long-term care insurance, and nursing home use," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 43(1), pages 65-80, August.
    6. Courtney Harold Van Houtven & Norma B. Coe & R. Tamara Konetzka, 2015. "Family Structure and Long‐Term Care Insurance Purchase," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(S1), pages 58-73, March.
    7. Maximilien Nayaradou & Sébastien Nouet & Manuel Plisson, 2016. "Les mécanismes économiques et financiers associés à la couverture dépendance : une analyse exploratoire sur données bancaires," Revue d'économie financière, Association d'économie financière, vol. 0(2), pages 273-326.
    8. Lee M. Lockwood, 2018. "Incidental Bequests and the Choice to Self-Insure Late-Life Risks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(9), pages 2513-2550, September.
    9. Cremer, Helmuth & Roeder, Kerstin, 2013. "Long-term care policy, myopia and redistribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 33-43.
    10. Bergquist, Savannah & Costa-Font, Joan & Swartz, Katherine, 2018. "Long-term care partnerships: Are they fit for purpose?," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 12(C), pages 151-158.
    11. Rinaldo Brau & Matteo Lippi Bruni, 2008. "Eliciting the demand for long‐term care coverage: a discrete choice modelling analysis," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(3), pages 411-433, March.
    12. Joan Costa-i-Font & Nilesh Raut, 2021. "Long-Term Care Partnership Effects on Medicaid and Private Insurance," CESifo Working Paper Series 9335, CESifo.
    13. Amitabh Chandra & Courtney Coile & Corina Mommaerts, 2023. "What Can Economics Say about Alzheimer's Disease?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(2), pages 428-470, June.
    14. Justina Klimaviciute & Pierre Pestieau & Jérôme Schoenmaeckers, 2020. "Long‐Term Care Insurance With Family Altruism: Theory and Empirics," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 87(4), pages 895-918, December.
    15. Justina Klimaviciute & Pierre Pestieau, 2023. "The economics of long‐term care. An overview," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(4), pages 1192-1213, September.
    16. Philippe De Donder & Marie-Louise Leroux, 2012. "Behavioral Biases and Long Term Care Annuities: A Political Economy Approach," CESifo Working Paper Series 3972, CESifo.
    17. Christophe Courbage & Nolwenn Roudaut, 2010. "On Insurance for Long-term Care in France," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 8(02), pages 24-28, July.
    18. repec:ces:ifodic:v:9:y:2011:i:2:p:16132672 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Cremer, Helmuth & Pestieau, Pierre & Roeder, Kerstin, 2016. "Social long-term care insurance with two-sided altruism," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 101-109.
    20. M. Martin Boyer & Franca Glenzer, 2021. "Pensions, annuities, and long-term care insurance: on the impact of risk screening," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 46(2), pages 133-174, September.
    21. Norton, E.C., 2016. "Health and Long-Term Care," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 951-989, Elsevier.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:47:y:2019:i:4:p:662-678. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.