Equality of Opportunity in Health Care: an Axiomatic Framework in a Policy Perspective

Antonio Abatemarco, Sergio Beraldo and Francesca Stroffolini ()
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Francesca Stroffolini: CELPE - Centre of Labour Economics and Economic Policy, University of Salerno - Italy, Postal: via Giovanni Paolo II, 132, 84084 - Fisciano (SA), ITALY, https://www.docenti.unina.it/#!/professor/4652414e43455343415354524f46464f4c494e49535452464e4336344436334638333958/riferimenti

No 161, CELPE Discussion Papers from CELPE - CEnter for Labor and Political Economics, University of Salerno, Italy

Abstract: We offer a new framework for defining and measuring equality of opportunity in health care, where (i) the chance of access to health care is disentangled from the utilization of health services, and (ii) both the rate of access and inequality of access to health care are accounted for the measurement of disparities in health opportunities. The latter are conceived as inversely related to the cost of a (bundle of) health treatment(s) of appropriate quality which an individual would have to pay (out-of-pocket) if the need for the health treatment emerges. In the ex-ante perspective we adopt, what is salient is the distribution of costs across cells, where each cell is defined by a set of characteristics determining access barriers to care (e.g., geographic location, assistance needs). On these premises, a general index forthe measurement of equality of access to health care is then developed and resource-conditional policy suggestions are deducted. A simple application based on real data shows that the methodology we provide can be easily applied.

Keywords: Health care; Equality of opportunity; Access costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2019-12-13
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