Premium subsidies and social health insurance: Substitutes or complements?

Mathias Kifmann () and Kerstin Roeder ()

Journal of Health Economics, 2011, vol. 30, issue 6, 1207-1218

Abstract: Premium subsidies have been advocated as an alternative to social health insurance. These subsidies are paid if expenditure on health insurance exceeds a given share of income. In this paper, we examine whether this approach is superior to social health insurance from a welfare perspective. We show that the results crucially depend on the correlation of health and productivity. For a positive correlation, we find that combining premium subsidies with social health insurance is the optimal policy.

Keywords: Social insurance; Health insurance; Redistributive taxation; Equity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H2 H5 I1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:30:y:2011:i:6:p:1207-1218

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2011.08.007

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