On discrimination in health insurance

Thomas Boyer-Kassem () and Sébastien Duchêne ()
Additional contact information
Thomas Boyer-Kassem: MAPP [Poitiers] - Métaphysique allemande et philosophie pratique [EA 2626] - UP - Université de Poitiers = University of Poitiers, Axe 2 (2017-2021) : "Vulnérabilités et risques" (MSHS Poitiers) - MSHS de Poitiers - Maison des sciences de l'homme et de la société de Poitiers - UP - Université de Poitiers = University of Poitiers - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UP - Université de Poitiers = University of Poitiers
Sébastien Duchêne: CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier - FRE2010 - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: In many countries, private health insurance companies are allowed to vary their premiums based on some information on individuals. This practice is intuitively justified by the idea that people should pay the premium corresponding to their own known risk. However, one may consider this as a form of discrimination or wrongful differential treatment. Our goal in this paper is to assess whether profiling is ethically permissible in health insurance. We go beyond the existing literature in considering a wide range of parameters, be they genetic, non-genetic, or even non-medical such as age or place of living. Analyzing several ethical concerns, and tackling the difficult question of responsibility, we argue that profiling is generally unjust in health insurance

Keywords: health insurance; ethics; health profiling; responsibility; discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ias
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-01975451v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-01975451v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-01975451

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().