When premiums are community-rated, risk adjustment (RA) serves to mitigate competitive insurers'; incentive to select favorable risks. However, unless fully prospective, it also undermines their incentives for efficiency. By capping its volume, one may try to counteract this tendency, exposing...

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...

Health insurance is potentially subject to risk selection, i.e. adverse selection on the part of consumers and cream skimming on the part of insurers. Adverse selection models predict that competitive health insurers can eschew high-risk individuals by offering contracts with low deductibles or...

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...

We study the link between illness severity and the use of public health care services by the privately insured under a public health system. Our theoretical model shows that this relationship will depend on the prioritization established by the public health authorities, the cost of waiting and...