IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/ucsbec/qt0jn5w4c1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Australian Private Health Insurance Boom: Was It Subsidies Or Liberalised?

Author

Listed:
  • Frech, Ted
  • Hopkins, Sandra
  • MacDonald, Gary

Abstract

Over the period 1997 to 2000, the Australian government introduced two waves of price subsidies, then liberalised regulation to encourage private health insurance. Most of the increase in coverage occurred after the liberalization. Thus, it appears that this policy change rather than the earlier subsidies, explains most of the increase. We explore the relative impact of the different policy changes using trend analysis and careful attention to timing. While much of the increase in coverage may be attributed to liberalised regulation, the price subsidy did increase coverage. The increase was commensurate with existing estimates of the price elasticity of demand for health insurance.

Suggested Citation

  • Frech, Ted & Hopkins, Sandra & MacDonald, Gary, 2000. "The Australian Private Health Insurance Boom: Was It Subsidies Or Liberalised?," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt0jn5w4c1, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucsbec:qt0jn5w4c1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/0jn5w4c1.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jane Hall & Richard De Abreu Lourenco & Rosalie Viney, 1999. "Carrots and sticks—the fall and fall of private health insurance in Australia," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(8), pages 653-660, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. James Butler, 2003. "Adverse Selection, Genetic Testing and Life Insurance — Lessons from Health Insurance in Australia," Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics, vol. 10(1), pages 73-82.
    2. Marisol Rodríguez & Alexandrina Stoyanova, 2006. "Changes in the demand for private medical insurance following a shift in tax incentives," Working Papers CREAP2006-12, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Dec 2006.

    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. Connelly, Luke B. & Brown III, H. Shelton, 2008. "Lifetime Fairness? Taxes, Subsidies, Age-Based Penalties, and the Price of Health Insurance in Australia," MPRA Paper 14671, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Damien Eldridge & Catagay Koc & Ilke Onur & Malathi Velamuri, 2011. "The Impact of Private Hospital Insurance on Utilization of Hospital Care in Australia: Evidence from the National Health Survey," Working Papers 2011.01, School of Economics, La Trobe University, revised Jan 2011.
    3. Damien S. Eldridge & Ilke Onur & Malathi Velamuri, 2017. "The impact of private hospital insurance on the utilization of hospital care in Australia," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(1), pages 78-95, January.
    4. Francesco Paolucci & Amir Shmueli, 2011. "The Introduction of Ex-ante Risk Equalisation in the Australian Private Health Insurance Market: A First Step," Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics, vol. 18(2), pages 71-92.
    5. Jeremiah Hurley & Rhema Vaithianathana & Thomas F. Crossley & Deborah Cobb-Clark, 2001. "Parallel Private Health Insurance in Australia: A Cautionary Tale and Lessons for Canada," Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis Working Paper Series 2001-12, Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis (CHEPA), McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada.
    6. Panos Kanavos & Olivier Wouters & Olivier J. Wouters & Martin McKee, 2017. "Private Financing of Health Care in Times of Economic Crisis: a Review of the Evidence," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 8, pages 23-29, March.
    7. World Bank, 2017. "Georgia Public Expenditure Review," World Bank Publications - Reports 27138, The World Bank Group.
    8. repec:bla:glopol:v:8:y:2017:i:s2:p:23-29 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Vineta Salale, 2006. "Modelling dynamic choice: Private health insurance in Australia, CHERE Research Report 24," Research Reports 24, CHERE, University of Technology, Sydney.
    10. Buchmueller, Thomas C. & Fiebig, Denzil G. & Jones, Glenn & Savage, Elizabeth, 2013. "Preference heterogeneity and selection in private health insurance: The case of Australia," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 757-767.
    11. Francesco Paolucci & James R. G. Butler & Wynand P. M. M. van de Ven, 2011. "Removing Duplication in Public/Private Health Insurance in Australia: Opting Out With Risk-adjusted Subsidies?," Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics, vol. 18(2), pages 49-70.
    12. Damien Eldridge & Catagay Koc & Ilke Onur & Malathi Velamuri, 2011. "The Impact of Private Hospital Insurance on Utilization of Hospital Care in Australia: Evidence from the National Health Survey," Working Papers 2011.01, School of Economics, La Trobe University, revised Jan 2011.
    13. Neil J. Buckley & Katherine Cuff & Jeremiah Hurley & Logan McLeod & Robert Nuscheler & David Cameron, 2012. "Willingness‐to‐pay for parallel private health insurance: evidence from a laboratory experiment," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 45(1), pages 137-166, February.
    14. Hussey, P. & Anderson, G. F., 2003. "A comparison of single- and multi-payer health insurance systems and options for reform," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 215-228, December.
    15. H. Brown & Luke Connelly, 2005. "Lifetime Cover in Private Insurance Markets," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 75-88, January.
    16. Jane Hall, 2005. "The politics of medicare: who gets what, when and how by GWENDOLYN GRAY. UNSW Press, Australia, 2004. No. of pages: 111. ISBN 0‐86840‐703‐8," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(8), pages 869-870, August.
    17. Mark Pearson & John P. Martin, 2005. "Should We Extend the Role of Private Social Expenditure?," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 23, OECD Publishing.
    18. Denzil Fiebig & Elizabeth Savage & Rosalie Viney, 2006. "Does the reason for buying health insurance influence behaviour? CHERE Working Paper 2006/1," Working Papers 2006/1, CHERE, University of Technology, Sydney.
    19. Thomas Buchmueller, 2008. "Community Rating, Entry-Age Rating and Adverse Selection in Private Health Insurance in Australia*," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 33(4), pages 588-609, October.
    20. John Hutton & Andrew Jones & Alan Maynard, 2003. "Announcement and Editorial," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(1), pages 1-2, January.
    21. Cheng, Terence Chai, 2014. "Measuring the effects of reducing subsidies for private insurance on public expenditure for health care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 159-179.

    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:cdl:ucsbec:qt0jn5w4c1. 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: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educsus.html .

    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.