The Effect of Private Health Insurance on Self-assessed Health Status and Health Satisfaction in Germany

René Petilliot

No 917, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: In Germany, private health insurance covers more innovative and costly treatments than public insurance. Moreover, privately insured individuals are treated preferentially by doctors. In this article, I use subjective health data to examine whether these superior features of private insurance actually transfer into better health. I focus on German adolescents who are still in education to control for selection and account for differences in health-conscious behavior between publicly and privately insured individuals. I find that privately and publicly insured individuals do not differ in health, which contrasts with previous research. Hence, doctors appear to be the sole profiteers of the private insurance system and billions of euros could be saved by aligning private and public health insurance.

Keywords: Health satisfaction; Self-assessed health status; Private health insurance; Public health insurance; Selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I12 I13 I18 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 p.
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ias
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp917

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