 Buying the Exit Option: Private Insurance in a Universal Health System -Evidence from Portugal, 2005-2019F.; de Mello-Sampayo; Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers from HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York Abstract: This paper documents a near-tripling of voluntary private health insurance coverage in Portugal across three national health surveys and argues, using complementary empirical strategies, that this expansion reflects exit -option demand from a rationed public system rather than conventional risk pooling. The income gap in coverage widened during the 2010-2014 austerity shock and partially unwound during recovery. An Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition attributes roughly 89 percent of the 2005-2014 expansion to behavioural change, while a triple-difference design provides directionally consistent evidence that high-need, high-income individuals drove the austerity-period growth. The findings have direct implications for the design of universal health systems that accommodate supplementary private coverage. Keywords: private health insurance; exit option; universal health system; austerity; income inequality; Portugal (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:hectdg:26/08 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers from HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York HEDG/HERC, Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom. Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.