Risk equalization and voluntary deductibles: a complex interaction

The presence of voluntary deductibles in the Swiss and Dutch mandatory health insurance has important implications for the respective risk equalization systems. In a theoretical analysis, we discuss the consequences of equalizing three types of expenditures: the net claims that are reimbursed by the insurer, the out-of-pocket expenditures and the expenditure savings due to moral hazard reduction. Equalizing only the net claims, as done in Switzerland, creates incentives for cream skimming and prevents insurers from incorporating out-of-pocket expenditures and moral hazard reductions into their premium structure. In an empirical analysis, we examine the effect of self-selection and conclude that the Swiss and Dutch risk equalization systems do not fully adjust for differences in health status between those who choose a deductible and those who do not. We discuss how this may lead to incentives for cream skimming and to a reduction of cross-subsidies from healthy to unhealthy individuals compared to a situation without voluntary deductibles.     

Does Full Insurance Increase the Demand for Health Care?

We estimate the causal impact of having full health insurance on healthcare expenditures. We take advantage of a unique quasi‐experimental setup in which deductibles and co‐payments were zero in a managed care plan and nonzero in regular insurance, until a policy change forced all individuals with an active plan to cover a minimum amount of their expenses. Using panel data and a nonlinear difference‐in‐differences strategy, we find a demand elasticity of about ?0.14 comparing full insurance with the cost‐sharing model and a significant upward shift in the likelihood to generate costs. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consumer Price Sensitivity and Social Health Insurer Choice in Germany and the Netherlands

In this paper, we examine the effects of the introduction of free choice and price competition in social health insurance in Germany and the Netherlands. Using panel data at the sickness fund level we estimate the price elasticity of sickness fund choice in both countries. We find that the price elasticity in Germany is high and rapidly increasing. Consistent with findings of other studies on health plan choice, the price elasticity is much lower for elderly than for non-elderly. In the Netherlands, by contrast, the price elasticity of fund choice is negligible. Only when people were forced to choose a sickness fund, they were quite sensitive to premium differences. Key factors in explaining the observed differences in switching behavior between both countries are the degree of financial risk for sickness funds, the features of the risk-adjustment mechanism and the role of employers.     

Spillover effects of supplementary on basic health insurance: evidence from the Netherlands

Like many other countries, the Netherlands has a health insurance system that combines mandatory basic insurance with voluntary supplementary insurance. Both types of insurance are founded on different principles. Since basic and supplementary insurance are sold by the same health insurers, both markets may interact. This paper examines to what extent basic and supplementary insurance are linked to each other and whether these links generate spillover effects of supplementary on basic insurance. Our analysis is based on an investigation into supplementary health insurance contracts, underwriting procedures and annual surveys among 1,700–2,100 respondents over the period 2006–2009. We find that health insurers increasingly use a variety of strategies to enforce a joint purchase of basic and supplementary health insurance. Despite incentives for health insurers to use supplementary insurance as a tool for risk selection in basic insurance, we find limited evidence of supplementary insurance being used this way. Only a minority of health insurers uses health questionnaires when people apply for supplementary coverage. Nevertheless, we find that an increasing proportion of high-risk individuals believe that insurers would not be willing to offer them another supplementary insurance contract. We discuss several strategies to prevent or to counteract the observed negative spillover effects of supplementary insurance.     

Differences in price elasticities of demand for health insurance: a systematic review

Many health insurance systems apply managed competition principles to control costs and quality of health care. Besides other factors, managed competition relies on a sufficient price-elastic demand. This paper presents a systematic review of empirical studies on price elasticity of demand for health insurance. The objective was to identify the differing international ranges of price elasticity and to find socio-economic as well as setting-oriented factors that influence price elasticity. Relevant literature for the topic was identified through a two-step identification process including a systematic search in appropriate databases and further searches within the references of the results. A total of 45 studies from countries such as the USA, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland were found. Clear differences in price elasticity by countries were identified. While empirical studies showed a range between ?0.2 and ?1.0 for optional primary health insurance in the US, higher price elasticities between ?0.6 and ?4.2 for Germany and around ?2 for Switzerland were calculated for mandatory primary health insurance. Dutch studies found price elasticities below ?0.5. In consideration of all relevant studies, age and poorer health status were identified to decrease price elasticity. Other socio-economic factors had an unclear impact or too limited evidence. Premium level, range of premiums, homogeneity of benefits/coverage and degree of forced decision were found to have a major influence on price elasticity in their settings. Further influence was found from supplementary insurance and premium-dependent employer contribution.     

农村居民收入与医疗服务需求及其弹性研究

目的：了解农民医疗服务需求收入弹性,评价不同收入水平农民用于医疗开支的状况.方法：采用系统抽样方法,对1 228户农民家庭进行健康询问调查,将调查家庭按收入高低分为5组,比较其医疗需求及收入弹性状况.结果：显示需求收入弹性为0.129 2,呈缺乏弹性（〈1）;医疗费用占收入的比重是一个增长的趋势,低收入人群医疗费用支出占收入的比重高于高收入人群.结论：收入虽然对医疗服务需求有一定影响,但农民在收入增加的同时,并不意味着在医疗服务方面花同等比例的钱,对医疗服务的消费并未给予足够的重视.     

Low-risk isn’t no-risk: Perinatal treatments and the health of low-income newborns

We investigate the effects of perinatal medical treatments on low-income newborns who are classified as low-risk. A policy rule in The Netherlands states that low-risk deliveries before week 37 should be supervised by physicians and later deliveries only by midwives with no physician present. This creates large discontinuities in the probability of receiving medical interventions only physicians are allowed to perform. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that babies born slightly before the week-37 cutoff are significantly less likely to die than babies born slightly later. Our data suggest that physician supervision of birth reduces the likelihood of adverse events such as fetal distress or emergency C-section. Our results indicate that low-income women benefit from receiving a higher level of medical care even if no explicit risk factors have been recognized, pointing to challenges in identifying all high-risk pregnancies. “Back-of-the-envelope” calculations suggest this additional care is highly cost-effective.     

Premium growth and its effect on employer-sponsored insurance

We use variation in premium inflation and general inflation across geographic areas to identify the effects of downward nominal wage rigidity on employers’ health insurance decisions. Using employer level data from the 2000 to 2005 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey-Insurance Component, we examine the effect of premium growth on the likelihood that an employer offers insurance, eligibility rates among employees, continuous measures of employee premium contributions for both single and family coverage, and deductibles. We find that small, low-wage employers are less likely to offer health insurance in response to increased premium inflation, and if they do offer coverage they increase employee contributions and deductible levels. In contrast, larger, low-wage employers maintain their offers of coverage, but reduce eligibility for such coverage. They also increase employee contributions for single and family coverage, but not deductibles. Among high-wage employers, all but the largest increase deductibles in response to cost pressures.     

Effect of patient reimbursement method on health‐care utilization: evidence from China

For most insurers, traditional methods of controlling health‐care demand include deductibles, co‐payments, stop‐losses, and insurance ceilings. This paper examines the effect of the patient reimbursement method of health insurance (immediate reimbursement or later reimbursement) on individuals' health‐care utilization decisions. We find that immediate reimbursement significantly increases the likelihood of patients seeking outpatient treatment in China. We also empirically explore the channels through which immediate reimbursement affects individual's incentives on health‐care demand. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On using sample selection methods in estimating the price elasticity of firms' demand for insurance

We evaluate a technique based on sample selection models that has been used by health economists to estimate the price elasticity of firms' demand for insurance. We demonstrate that, this technique produces inflated estimates of the price elasticity. We show that alternative methods lead to valid estimates.     

Potential determinants of deductible uptake in health insurance: How to increase uptake in The Netherlands?

In health insurance, voluntary deductibles are offered to the insured in return for a premium rebate. Previous research has shown that 11 % of the Dutch insured opted for a voluntary deductible (VD) in health insurance in 2014, while the highest VD level was financially profitable for almost 50 % of the population in retrospect. To explain this discrepancy, this paper identifies and discusses six potential determinants of the decision to opt for a VD from the behavioral economic literature: loss aversion, risk attitude, ambiguity aversion, debt aversion, omission bias, and liquidity constraints. Based on these determinants, five potential strategies are proposed to increase the number of insured opting for a VD. Presenting the VD as the default option and providing transparent information regarding the VD are the two most promising strategies. If, as a result of these strategies, more insured would opt for a VD, moral hazard would be reduced.     

Choice of hospital for delivery: a comparison of high-risk and low-risk women.

OBJECTIVE. This article tests whether or not the factors that affect hospital choice differ for selected subgroups of the population. DATA SOURCES. 1985 California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) discharge abstracts and hospital financial data were used. STUDY DESIGN. Models for hospital choice were estimated using McFadden's conditional logit model. Separate models were estimated for high-risk and low-risk patients, and for high-risk and low-risk women covered either by private insurance or by California Medicaid. The model included independent variables to control for quality, price, ownership, and distance to the hospital. DATA EXTRACTION. Data covered all maternal deliveries in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1985 (N = 61,436). ICD-9 codes were used to classify patients as high-risk or low-risk. The expected payment code on the discharge abstract was used to identify insurance status. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS. The results strongly reject the hypothesis that high-risk and low-risk women have the same choice process. Hospital quality tended to be more important for high-risk than low-risk women. These results also reject the hypothesis that factors influencing choice of hospital are the same for women covered by private insurance as for those covered by Medicaid. Further, high-risk women covered by Medicaid were less likely than high-risk women covered by private insurance to deliver in hospitals with newborn intensive care units. CONCLUSIONS. The results show that the choice factors vary across several broadly defined subgroups of patients with a specific condition. Thus, estimates aggregating all patients may be misleading. Specifically, such estimates will understate actual patient response to quality of care indicators, since patient sensitivity to quality of care varies with the patients' risk status.     

The productivity of health care and health production functions

This paper derives a necessary and sufficient condition under which increased health care productivity must lead to decreased (increased) demand for health care as long as the demand for health care is inelastic (elastic). It is shown that this condition identifies a class of health production functions, which may provide useful guidance to empirical studies that depend wholly or partly on the correct specification of a health production function. As an illustration, it is demonstrated that this class of production functions may be useful for empirical studies that test the hypothesis that schooling, increasing the efficiency of health production, leads to a larger health output from a given set of health inputs. The paper also offers broader classes of production functions that would enable one to test this relationship between the demand elasticity and the effect of health care productivity on health care demand.     

Retrospective evaluation of control measures for contacts of patient with Marburg hemorrhagic fever

After an imported case of Marburg hemorrhagic fever was reported in 2008 in the Netherlands, control measures to prevent transmission were implemented. To evaluate consequences of these measures, we administered a structured questionnaire to 130 contacts classified as either having high-risk or low-risk exposure to body fluids of the case-patient; 77 (59.2%) of 130 contacts responded. A total of 67 (87.0%) of 77 respondents agreed that temperature monitoring and reporting was necessary, significantly more often among high-risk than low-risk contacts (p<0.001). Strict compliance with daily temperature monitoring decreased from 80.5% (62/77) during week 1 to 66.2% (51/77) during week 3. Contacts expressed concern about development of Marburg hemorrhagic fever (58.4%, 45/77) and infecting a family member (40.2%, 31/77). High-risk contacts had significantly higher scores on psychological impact scales (p<0.001) during and after the monitoring period. Public health authorities should specifically address consequences of control measures on the daily life of contacts.     

安徽省心血管病患病风险人群社区公共卫生综合干预对血压水平控制效果分析

  目的  分析不同心血管疾病(cardiovascular disease, CVD)患病风险人群社区公共卫生综合干预血压控制效果。  方法  收集2016—2020年安徽省社区公共卫生综合干预资料(包括基线、3个月、12个月随访数据),采用《中国心血管疾病风险评估和管理指南》推荐的10年CVD风险评估模型将研究对象分为心血管疾病高危和非高危人群,比较高危和非高危人群社区公共卫生综合干预血压控制效果。  结果  共随访3 755名研究对象,CVD高危人群645人,标化检出率10.9%。随访12个月与基线相比,高危人群SBP和DBP分别下降了16.47 mm Hg(95% CI:-18.09~-14.86)、2.66 mm Hg(95% CI:-3.63~-1.69),非高危人群SBP和DBP分别下降了10.43 mm Hg(95% CI:-11.16~-9.70)、2.41 mm Hg(95% CI:-2.81~-2.01);3个月与基线相比,高危人群SBP和DBP分别下降了12.27 mm Hg(95% CI:-13.88~-10.65)、3.66 mm Hg(95% CI:-4.54~-2.77),非高危人群SBP和DBP分别下降了6.05 mm Hg(95% CI:-6.80~-5.30)、2.61 mm Hg(95% CI:-3.00~-2.23)。高危人群随访3个月后SBP下降水平、随访12个月后SBP和DBP下降水平明显高于非高危组(t=-5.100,t=-5.873,t=-2.729,均有P＜0.05)。  结论  社区公共卫生综合干预对CVD高危人群血压改善优于非高危人群。因此,未来的公共卫生工作应进一步关注非高危人群。     

Nonparametric bounds on the effect of deductibles in health care insurance on doctor visits - Swiss evidence

We evaluate the effect of the size of deductibles in the basic health insurance in Switzerland on the probability of a doctor visit. We employ nonparametric bounding techniques to minimise statistical assumptions. In order to tighten the bounds we consider two further assumptions: mean independence of an instrument and monotone treatment response. Under these two assumption we are able to bound the causal effect of high deductibles compared to low deductibles below zero. We conclude that the difference in health care utilisation is partly due to a reduction of moral hazard effects.