Addressing Market Segmentation and Incentives for Risk Selection: How Well Does Risk Equalisation in the Irish Private Health Insurance Market Work?

Conor Keegan, Conor Teljeur, Brian Turner and Steve Thomas
Additional contact information
Conor Teljeur: Health Information and Quality Authority
Steve Thomas: Trinity College Dublin

The Economic and Social Review, 2017, vol. 48, issue 1, 61-84

Abstract: This study assesses the efficacy of Ireland’s recently introduced risk equalisation scheme in its voluntary health insurance market. Robust risk equalisation is especially important in an Irish context given acute risk segmentation and incentives for risk selection that have evolved within the market. Using uniquely acquired VHI data (N=1,235,922) this analysis assesses the predictive efficacy of both current and alternative risk equalisation specifications. Results suggest that the low predictive power of the current risk equalisation design (R2 = 6.8 per cent) is not appropriately correcting for anti-competitive incentives and asymmetries in the market. Improvements to the current design could be achieved through the introduction of diagnosis-based risk adjusters.

Keywords: risk equalisation; health insurance; Ireland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.esr.ie/article/view/676/154 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Addressing market segmentation and incentives for risk selection: How well does risk equalisation in the Irish private health insurance market work? (2017)
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:eso:journl:v:48:y:2017:i:1:p:61-84

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Economic and Social Review from Economic and Social Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Aedin Doris ().