The Theory of Social Health Insurance

Peter Zweifel

Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, 2007, vol. 3, issue 3, 183-273

Abstract: The objective of this text is to develop the theory of social health insurance (SHI; the expression used especially in the United States is "public health insurance," which will be viewed as one variant of SHI here). While a good deal is known about the demand and supply of private insurance, the theoretical basis of SHI is much more fragile. Specifically, on the demand side, what are the reasons for social (or public) health insurance to exist, even to dominate private health insurance in most developed countries? With regard to supply, what do we know about the objectives and constraints of SHI managers? Finally, economists can predict properties of the equilibrium characterizing private health insurance (PHI). However, what is the likely outcome ("performance") of SHI? At the normative level, one may ask, Should the balance be shifted from SHI to PHI?

Keywords: Social health insurance; Moral hazard; Insurance demand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/0700000004 (application/xml)

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:now:fntmic:0700000004

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics from now publishers
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lucy Wiseman ().