Substantial uncertainty exists regarding the causal effect of health insurance on the utilization of care. We exploit a sharp change in insurance coverage rates that results from young adults "aging out" of their parents' insurance plans to estimate the effect of insurance coverage on the...

Dans un contexte de vieillissement de la population, différents scenarii sont envisagés pour réformer l'organisation et le financement de la prise en charge des personnes âgées dépendantes. La place de la prévoyance individuelle dans le financement de la dépendance est à ce titre...

Health insurance affects the rate at which individuals visit hospitals and emergency departments (EDs). We identify the causal effect of losing health insurance using a regression discontinuity design. We compare individuals just before and after their twenty third birthday, which insurers have...

This paper examines the impact of coinsurance exemption for prescription medicines applied to elderly individuals in Spain after retirement. To evaluate this coinsurance change we use a rich administrative dataset that links pharmaceutical consumption and hospital discharge records for the full...

In France, people obtain basic health insurance coverage through a public health insurance system. Although public coverage is comprehensive, substantial co-payments and deductibles are more and more required and individuals become increasingly dependant on private complementary health...

How has the economic risk of health spending changed over time for U.S. households? We describe trends in aggregate health spending in the United States and how private insurance markets and public insurance programs have changed over time. We then present evidence from Consumer Expenditure...

In the Medicare program, increases in cost sharing by a supplemental insurer can exert financial externalities. We study a policy change that raised patient cost sharing for the supplemental insurer for retired public employees in California. We find that physician visits and prescription drug...

Substantial uncertainty exists regarding the causal effect of health insurance on the utilization of care. Most studies cannot determine whether the large differences in healthcare utilization between the insured and the uninsured are due to insurance status or to other unobserved differences...

In the 1990s, competition among health insurance funds (‘sickness funds’) was introduced in Germany. As one means of competition, free choice of initial health funds and subsequent switching between them was made available to all insured. Since then, the number of funds has decreased...

The paper exploits finite mixture (latent class) models to account for consumer heterogeneity in estimating the effect of coinsurance rate on the demand for health care. The parametric analysis employs a two-part model, a Tobit model, and generalized linear models with latent classes. The...