Camou age and Ballooning in Health Insurance: Evidence from Abortion

This paper provides a microeconomic basis for simultaneously explaining two phenomena related to health insurance: camou age and ballooning. We use abortions in Switzerland as an illustrative example. First, a signi cant share of abortions is camou aged by contrived medical coding, and second, there is evidence of ballooning in that jurisdictions with strict enforcement of abortion regulation tend to export the problem to more liberal ones. The analysis di ers from the existing literature in that we explicitly model the search e ort of an individual seeking a health service, i.e., an abortion or camou age. Using data provided by a major social health insurer, theoretical predictions are con rmed to a considerable degree. In particular, women who derive a particularly high bene t from an abortion (and even more so, from its camou age) are less discouraged by strict enforcement than others. JEL Classi cation: D47, G22, I18, J13, K42