PRIVATE OR PUBLIC PENSION INSURANCE?

Public Pension Reforms and Private Savings

The 1999 reforms to the Korea National Pension Scheme resulted in a unique situation, in which those who were insured by the pension scheme and those who were uninsured coexisted. Exploiting this situation, this paper evaluates the effect of public pension on private savings. The estimation results show that the average effect is close to zero. Households with low or very high saving rates were...

Public-private partnerships and insurance regulation.

Public Health Insurance and Private Savings

Recent theoretical work suggests that means and asset-tested social insurance programs can explain the low savings of lower income households in the U.S. We assess the validity of this hypothesis by investigating the effect of Medicaid, the health insurance program for low income women and children, on savings behavior. We do so using data on asset holdings from the Survey of Income and Program...

Opt out or Top Up? Voluntary Healthcare Insurance and the Public vs. Private Substitution

We investigate whether people enrolled into voluntary health insurance (VHI) substitute public consumption with private (opt out) or just enlarge their private consumption, without reducing reliance upon public provisions (top up). We study the case of Italy, where a mixed insurance system is in place. To this purpose, we specify a joint model for public and private specialist visits counts, an...

The challenge of private insurance for public good.

A fundamental principle of WHO’s work in health financing is the concept of universal coverage. This requires access for all people to appropriate promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative health care at an affordable cost. This is one requirement of health for all and is consistent with the principle of equity in access. The objective of universal coverage is also associated with equi...