Public and Private Health Insurance in Germany: The Ignored Risk Selection Problem

Martina Grunow and Robert Nuscheler

No 93, Working Papers from Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE)

Abstract: While risk selection within the German public health insurance system has received considerable attention, risk selection between public and private health insurers has largely been ignored. This is surprising since - given the institutional structure - risk selection between systems is likely to be more pronounced. We find clear evidence for risk selection in favor of private insurers. While private insurers are unable to select the healthy upon enrollment they manage to dump high risk individuals who then end up in the public system. This gives private insurers an unjustified competitive advantage vis-a-vis public insurers. A risk adjusted compensation would mitigate this advantage.

Keywords: Risk Selection; Public and Private Health Insurance; Risk Adjustment. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C13 C23 I10 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2010-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://bgpe.cms.rrze.uni-erlangen.de/files/2023/0 ... election-Problem.pdf First version, 2010 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE IN GERMANY: THE IGNORED RISK SELECTION PROBLEM (2014)
Working Paper: Public and Private Health Insurance in Germany: The Ignored Risk Selection Problem (2010)
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:bav:wpaper:093_grunownuscheler

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anton Barabasch ().