International Portability of Health-Cost Cover: Mobility, Insurance, and Redistribution

Martin Werding and Stuart R. McLennan

CESifo Economic Studies, 2015, vol. 61, issue 2, 484-519

Abstract: Public health insurance and other arrangements covering health costs effectively provide insurance against changes in health status. These arrangements engage in burden-smoothing over the life cycle and entail various elements of redistribution. Lack of portability regarding this type of cover may impede international mobility and create financial losses or windfall gains on various sides, which can lead to risk segmentation across national health systems. Existing portability rules do not fully address these problems. In this article, we try to clarify the implications of mobility for typical systems covering health costs and the requirements which have to be met to ensure full portability. When individuals are internationally mobile, compensating payments are needed based on changes in expected net costs in both of the health funds involved. Illustrative simulations show that this approach may be operative under real-world conditions. (JEL codes: F22, F55, H51, H73, J6).

Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cesifo/ifu022 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: International Portability of Health-Cost Cover: Mobility, Insurance, and Redistribution (2012)
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:oup:cesifo:v:61:y:2015:i:2:p:484-519.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

CESifo Economic Studies is currently edited by Panu Poutvaara

More articles in CESifo Economic Studies from CESifo Group Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().