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The effect of a ban on gender-based pricing on risk selection in the German health insurance market

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  • Huang, Shan
  • Salm, Martin

Abstract

Starting from December 2012, insurers in the European Union were prohibited from charging gender-discriminatory prices. We examine the effect of this unisex mandate on risk segmentation in the German health insurance market. Although gender used to be a pricing factor in Germany's private health insurance (PHI) sector, it was never used as a pricing factor in the social health insurance (SHI) sector. The unisex mandate makes PHI relatively more attractive for women and less attractive for men. Based on data from the German socio-economic panel, we analyze how the unisex mandate affects the difference between women and men in switching rates between SHI and PHI. We find that the unisex mandate increases the probability of switching from SHI to PHI for women relative to men. On the other hand, the unisex mandate has no effect on the gender difference in switching rates from PHI to SHI. Because women have on average higher health care expenditures than men, our results imply a worsening of the PHI risk pool and an improvement of the SHI risk pool. Our results demonstrate that regulatory measures such as the unisex mandate can affect risk selection between public and private health insurance sectors.

Suggested Citation

  • Huang, Shan & Salm, Martin, 2020. "The effect of a ban on gender-based pricing on risk selection in the German health insurance market," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 29(1), pages 3-17.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:222576
    DOI: 10.1002/hec.3958
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Thomas Neusius, 2021. "Inhomogenous risk exposure in dual insurance system: selection effects in Germany’s long-term care plans," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 1-24, January.
    2. Ye, Liping & Geng, Jiang-Bo, 2021. "Measuring the connectedness of global health sector stock markets," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Germany; public and private health insurance; risk selection; unisex mandate;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I13 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Insurance, Public and Private
    • 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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