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...

Our study reexamines standard econometric approaches for the detection of information asymmetries on insurance markets. We claim that evidence based on a standard framework with 2 equations, which uses potential sources of information asymmetries, should stress the importance of heterogeneity in the parameters. We argue that conclusions derived from this methodology can be misleading if the est...

The Boards of Trustees for the two Social Security and the two Medicare Trust Funds recently released their annual reports to Congress detailing the operations of the trust funds during 1992 and their projected financial status for future years. Based on the Trustees' best estimates, the reports show: The Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund is projected to be able to pay b...

We consider social insurance schemes with a two-part benefit formula: a flat (constant) term and a variable term which is proportional to individuals’ contributions. The factor of proportionality defines the type of social insurance. We adopt a two-stage political economy approach. At the first, constitutional stage, the type of social insurance is chosen “behind the veil of ignorance”, accordi...

OBJECTIVE To examine the care given to patients with hypertension in the Brazilian public and private health services in the population of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. METHODS Telephone interviews were conducted in a sample of hypertensive adults in the year 2009, in Belo Horizonte (n = 100). We compared the care provided to hypertensive users of the Unified Health System (SUS) and of the Su...

background: non-communicable diseases (ncds) and psychological hazards are increasingly observed in industries, necessitating the need to strengthen industrial health systems to control the same. district level data on level of functioning of industrial health systems and services with special focus on systems available for mental health care is lacking in india. this information is vital to pl...

BACKGROUND In Switzerland, basic health insurance is mandatory for all inhabitants, but a rising number of insured have arrears in premium payments, potentially leading to coverage suspension. We aimed at characterizing insured with debt enforcement proceedings with respect to socio-demographic and health utilization aspects. METHODS Cross-sectional analysis of 508.000 insured with basic heal...

The Medicare program, which provides insurance coverage to the elderly in the United States, does not protect them fully against high out-of-pocket costs. For this reason private supplementary insurance, named Medigap, has been available to cover Medicare gaps. This paper studies how Medigap affects the utilization of inpatient care, separating the incentive and selection effects of supplementa...

there are fragmentations in iran’s health insurance system. multiple health insurance funds exist, without adequate provisions for transfer or redistribution of cross subsidy among them. multiple risk pools, including several private secondary insurance schemes, have resulted in a tiered health insurance system with inequitable benefit packages for different segments of the population. also fra...