Der soziale Ausgleich in der gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung: Income Redistribution under Germany’s Statutory Health Insurance Scheme

Lutz Peter F. and Schneider Ulrike
Additional contact information
Lutz Peter F.: Universität Hannover, Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Königsworther Platz 1, D-30167 Hannover.
Schneider Ulrike: Universität Hannover, Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Königsworther Platz 1, D-30167 Hannover.

Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), 1998, vol. 217, issue 6, 718-740

Abstract: Premiums under Germany’s statutory health care insurance are not risk-related but incomerelated. Consequently, contributions will - if at all - only accidentally amount to the actuarially fair premium. Underlying this premium setting practice is the principle of solidarity between good and bad risks, as well as the pursuit of income redistribution goals through the public health insurance scheme. Taking risk-equalization as integral to insurance coverage, our analysis focuses on the purely redistributive component of health insurance premiums. We use secondary but nationally representative data from 1990 to measure the efficiency of income equalization in the statutory sickness insurance. Our findings suggest that the current premium setting practice is not conducive to income equalization. The system is inefficient to the extent of producing perverse effects. Hence we support proposals to modify the premium system according to the equivalence principle while using tax-transfer systems to achieve the objective of income redistribution.

Keywords: Health Care insurance; public health insurance; program efficiency; income redistribution; horizontal equity; tax-transfer system.; Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung; sozialer Ausgleich; Einkommensausgleich; sozialpolitische Effizienz; Grundsatz der Belastungsgleichheit; Steuer-Transfer-System.; Health Care insurance; public health insurance; program efficiency; income redistribution; horizontal equity; tax-transfer system. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/jbnst-1998-0605 (text/html)

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:jns:jbstat:v:217:y:1998:i:6:p:718-740

DOI: 10.1515/jbnst-1998-0605

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik) is currently edited by Peter Winker

More articles in Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik) from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().