Demand for insurance (including long-term care, supple- mentary insurance); supply of insurance services; moral hazard, its control and trade-offs with risk-pooling; adverse selection and cream skimming; tax-financed health care sys- tems; tax policy, exemptions, personal subsidies and health care financing; private and public systems of health insur- ance; welfare effects of ‘excess’ insurance and the trade-off
with internalizing externalities; insurance effects on health care providers; issues in coverage: services covered, individual eligibility.
On the third Thursday of every month, we speak to a recent graduate about their thesis and their studies. This month’s guest is Dr Mathilde Péron who graduated with a PhD from Université Paris Dauphine. If you would like to suggest… Read More »Thesis Thursday: Mathilde Péron
Adverse selection, a process whereby low-risk individuals drop out of the insurance pool, leaving only high-risk individuals, arises when the individuals purchasing insurance have better information regarding their risk status than does the insurer. […] In the limit, adverse selection… Read More »Why insurance works better with some adverse selection
Yesterday I explored one of the major challenges to affordable, universal health insurance, namely the high cost of providing care to the sickest patients. The extreme distribution of healthcare costs means that “Targeting the highest spenders represents the greatest opportunity… Read More »“Doing the math” on the distribution of healthcare expenditures: a Pareto-like distribution is inevitable
One of the major challenges to affordable, universal health insurance is the high cost of providing care to the sickest patients. According to Roy Vaughn, senior vice president at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, “just 5 percent of the company’s marketplace… Read More »Sharing the burden of healthcare: providing care to our sickest patients
Steven Levitt and his trusty Freakonomics sidekick were invited by David Cameron to advise on health policy, as they recount in their latest book. Apparently the PM walked out on them. Levitt has kindly given us some more details on his proposal for British healthcare. It consisted of… Read More »Recommended reading for Steven Levitt