Rationale: Private health insurance (PHI) covers 45 million people in Brazil, which makes it one of the largest market in the world. It was until recently unregulated, and little information was available on its characteristics and impact. Recently available data make it possible to assess its...

This study examines the effect of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) on the use of health care services among the privately insured non-elderly population. Using data from the 2000 Medical Expenditures Panel Survey, we find that HMO members are not particularly healthier than non-HMO...

The idea of regulating private health plans so as to favor major players and the managed care is incompatible with the guidelines of the National Health System [Sistema Unico de Saude (SUS)] and for this reason we defend instead a regulatory action aiming to strengthen the public sphere. In...

We show that the provision of even incomplete public insurance can substantially crowd out private insurance demand. We examine the interaction of the public Medicaid program with the private market for long-term care insurance and estimate that Medicaid can explain the lack of private insurance...

We study insurers' use of prescription drug formularies to screen consumers in the ACA Health Insurance Exchanges. We begin by showing that Exchange risk adjustment and reinsurance succeed in neutralizing selection incentives for most, but not all, consumer types. A minority of consumers,...

The effects of television advertising in the market for health insurance are of distinct interest to both firms and regulators. Regulators are concerned about firms potentially using ads to "cream skim," or attract an advantageous risk pool, as well as the potential for firms to use...

To insure policyholders against contemporaneous health expenditure shocks and future reclassification risk, long-term health insurance constitutes an alternative to community-rated short-term contracts with an individual mandate. Relying on unique claims panel data from a large private insurer...

This chapter summarizes the many aspects of public policy for health care. I first consider government policy affecting individual behaviors. Government intervention to change individual actions such as smoking and drinking is frequently justified on externality grounds. External costs of...

We study a general screening model that encompasses a health insurance market in which consumers have multiple dimensions of private information and a price-setting insurer (e.g., a monopolist or a social planner) offers vertically differentiated contracts. We combine theory and empirics to...

Incomplete health insurance enrollment is a persistent U.S. challenge despite large subsidies. We ask whether hassles built into enrollment systems matter for insurance take-up and targeting. Studying removal of an auto-enrollment policy, we find that a small hassle - a requirement to actively...