In the backdrop of the low level of health insurance coverage in India, this study examines the determinants of the scaling-up process of health insurance by analyzing the rational behaviour of an insurance agent facing a trade-off between selling ‘health insurance’ and ‘other forms of...

This paper examines the determinants of hospital stay intensity, the decision to seek hospital care as a public or private patient and the decision to purchase private hospital insurance. We describe a theoretical model to motivate the simultaneous nature of these decisions. For the empirical...

This paper investigates the effects of removing subsidies for private health insurance on public sector expenditure for hospital care. An econometric framework using simultaneous equation models is developed to analyze the interrelated decisions on the intensity and type of health care use and...

Many governments with dual public and private health systems subsidise private health insurance (PHI) with the aim to ease the burden on the public system. Understanding how elderly individuals respond to subsidies is important because they can benefit more from PHI but often find it...

Universal health coverage is a widely shared goal across lower-income countries. We conducted a large-scale, 4-year trial that randomized premiums and subsidies for India's first national, public hospital insurance program, RSBY. We find roughly 60% uptake even when consumers were charged...