Winners and Losers of Universal Health Insurance: A Macroeconomic Analysis

Ng Wung Lik () and Wang Yin-Chi ()
Additional contact information
Ng Wung Lik: National Cheng Kung University, Department of Economics, Tainan, Taiwan
Wang Yin-Chi: Department of Economics, National Taipei University – Main Campus, Social Science Building 3F04, No.151, Daxue Rd., Sanxia Dist., New Taipei City 23741, Taiwan

The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, 2020, vol. 20, issue 1, 20

Abstract: This paper studies the supply-side distortions and the consequences resulted from provider-side cost containing universal health insurance (UHI) scheme. A two-sector overlapping generations model of endogenous physicians’ specialty choice is presented. We find that the general public is possible to be benefited from the cost containing UHI if the quality of medical services does not deteriorate too much. However, physicians in the medical service sector suffer from such scheme and end up earning lower incomes, regardless of one’s specialty and talent. Inequality among physicians also increases.

Keywords: overlapping generations model; human capital; inequality; welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E13 I11 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/bejte-2018-0064 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

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:bpj:bejtec:v:20:y:2020:i:1:p:20:n:8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/bejte/html

DOI: 10.1515/bejte-2018-0064

Access Statistics for this article

The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics is currently edited by Burkhard C. Schipper

More articles in The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().