The Purpose and Limits of Social Health Insurance

Peter Zweifel ()
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Peter Zweifel: Socioeconomic Institute, University of Zurich

No 509, SOI - Working Papers from Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich

Abstract: This contribution seeks to answer two related questions. First, what is the purpose of social health insurance? Or put in slightly different terms, what are the reasons for social (or public) health insurance to exist, even to dominate private health insurance in most developed countries? And second, what are the limits of social health insurance? Can one say that there is "too much" social health insurance in the following two senses: Should the balance be shifted towards the private alternative? And is the degree of coverage excessive?

Keywords: social health insurance; private health insurance; insurance coverage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2005-09, Revised 2005-09
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 (1)

Published in Foundations and Trends in Microeconomics, 3(3), 183�273, 2007

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https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/52206/1/wp0509.pdf Revised version, 2005 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:soz:wpaper:0509

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