IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aeq/aeqsjb/v126_y2006_i1_q1_p20-57.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Health premiums or health contributions? An evaluation of health care reform options in Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Hans Fehr
  • Heinrich Jess

Abstract

The present study quantifies the revenue, distributional and efficiency effects of various reform options for the German health care system. Starting from a baseline path of the economy which represents the existing public and private mixture of health care providers in the German health care system, we introduce various reform packages which change the financing, the contribution base and the membership in the public system. Our simulations indicate that a premium system is superior to the citizen insurance model, since the former allows the redistribution to be financed through consumption taxes instead of wage taxes. Efficiency gains are maximized with the health premium model because this reform allows an immediate transition (compared to a privatization strategy) and minimizes the required compensation payments (compared to the citizen premium model) which distort labor supply. Winners of such a reform are mainly younger workers, while older workers, civil servants and self-employed will lose.

Suggested Citation

  • Hans Fehr & Heinrich Jess, 2006. "Health premiums or health contributions? An evaluation of health care reform options in Germany," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 126(1), pages 20-57.
    • Handle: RePEc:aeq:aeqsjb:v126_y2006_i1_q1_p20-57
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Feil, Michael & Klinger, Sabine & Zika, Gerd, 2006. "Sozialabgaben und Beschäftigung : Simulationen mit drei makroökonomischen Modellen," IAB-Discussion Paper 200622, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    2. Jess Heinrich, 2006. "Steuerfinanzierung von Sozialleistungen? / Tax Funding of Social Security Benefits?: Verteilungs- und Effizienzeffekte einer Umfinanzierung von Sozialleistungen in der gesetzlichen Renten- und Kranken," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 226(4), pages 436-462, August.
    3. Göpffarth Dirk & Henke Klaus-Dirk, 2007. "Finanzierungsreform und Risikostrukturausgleich – Was bleibt vom Ausgleichsverfahren? / Health Care Finance Reform in Germany – Effects on the Risk Adjustment Scheme," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 227(1), pages 27-48, February.
    4. Kemnitz Alexander, 2013. "A Simple Model of Health Insurance Competition," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 14(4), pages 432-448, December.
    5. Christian Bünnings & Harald Tauchmann, 2015. "Who Opts out of the Statutory Health Insurance? A Discrete Time Hazard Model for Germany," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(10), pages 1331-1347, October.
    6. Kallweit Manuel & Kohlmeier Anabell, 2014. "Zusatzbeiträge in der Gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung / Income-independent Surcharges in German Statutory Health Insurance: Weiterentwicklungsoptionen und ihre finanziellen sowie allokativen Effekte ," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 234(4), pages 490-517, August.
    7. repec:jns:jbstat:v:227:y:2007:i:1:p:27-48 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Schubert, Stefanie & Schnabel, Reinhold, 2009. "Curing Germany's health care system by mandatory health premia?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 911-923, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D58 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Models
    • H22 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Incidence
    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aeq:aeqsjb:v126_y2006_i1_q1_p20-57. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gabriele Freudenmann (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.duncker-humblot.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.