Social insurance, private health insurance and individual welfare

Kai Zhao

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 2017, vol. 78, issue C, 102-117

Abstract: This paper studies the impact of social insurance on individual choices and welfare in a dynamic general equilibrium model with uncertain medical expenses and individual health insurance choices. I find that social insurance (modeled as the combination of a minimum consumption floor and the Medicaid program) does not only distort saving and labor supply decisions, but also has a large crowding out effect on the demand for private health insurance. However, despite the distorting effects, the net welfare consequence of eliminating social insurance is still negative in most cases. In addition, the large crowding out effect on private health insurance suggests that the existence of social insurance programs may be one reason why some Americans do not buy any health insurance.

Keywords: Saving; Uncertain medical expenses; Health insurance; Means testing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E20 E60 H30 I13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165188917300489
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Social Insurance, Private Health Insurance and Individual Welfare (2016)
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:eee:dyncon:v:78:y:2017:i:c:p:102-117

DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2017.03.004

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control is currently edited by J. Bullard, C. Chiarella, H. Dawid, C. H. Hommes, P. Klein and C. Otrok

More articles in Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().