The charter-protected right of all Canadians to purchase private medical and hospital services and insurance for medically required services was implied in the 2005 landmark judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) case involving Chaoulli/Zeliotis vs Quebec and Canada. This precedent-setting judgment is now part of Canadian case law and jurisprudence. In this SCC case, two sections of Queb...

Growth of national healthcare spending is a problem confronting national governments of all industrially advanced countries. Healthcare spending in the U.S. reached 13.9% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2003, compared to only 8% in Japan. In the U.S., health insurance is voluntary, with 15% of the population uninsured. In Japan, health insurance is mandatory and virtually universal, with...

Private health insurance exchanges offer employer health insurance, combining online shopping, increased plan choice, benefit administration, and cost-containment strategies. This article examines how private exchanges function, how they may affect employers and employees, and the possible implications for the Affordable Care Act's (ACA's) Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) Marketplac...

In this paper we derive a market-consistent value for long-term insurance contracts, with a focus on long-term health insurance contracts as found, e.g., in the German private health insurance industry. To this end, we rst set up a health insurance company model and, second, conduct a simulation study to calculate the present value of future pro ts and the time value of nancial options and guar...

We study the existence of self-selection and moral hazard in the Chilean health insurance industry. Dependent workers must purchase health insurance either from one public or several private insurance providers. For them, we analyze the relationship between health care services utilization and the choice of either private or public insurance. In the case of independent workers, where there is n...

OBJECTIVE To inform policymakers and child health advocates about children's health insurance coverage in each state as Congress debates proposals to restructure the Medicaid program amidst declining employer-based dependent health insurance coverage. METHODS Multiple years of data from the March supplement of the Current Population Surveys were pooled to yield more reliable estimates of chan...

We use the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) to analyze determinants of the demand for supplemental health insurance covering hospital and dental in Germany. The GSOP dataset provides doctor diagnosed indicators of the individual’s health state, risk attitude, and demand for medical services and insurance purchases in other lines of insurance as well as rich demographical and socioeconomical ...

The regulation of health insurance is an important and often controversial issue. Rules intended to improve access to insurance for high risk consumer have the potential to reduce overall coverage by inducing adverse selection. This paper examines the issue of adverse selection in the context of the market for private health insurance in Australia, where premiums are required to be community ra...

Throughout the 1990s states sought politically acceptable policies to reduce the ranks of the uninsured. Visions of comprehensive health reform and universal coverage yielded by mid-decade to more modest measures to repair private health insurance markets, and to these enactments were added several new public programs (state and federal) to expand coverage for lower-income children and, in some...

South Korea introduced mandatory social health insurance for industrial workers in large corporations in 1977, and extended it incrementally to the self-employed until it covered the entire population in 1989. Thirty years of national health insurance in Korea can provide valuable lessons on key issues in health care financing policy which now face many low- and middle-income countries aiming t...