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Collusion in the Private Health Insurance Market: Empirical Evidence for Chile

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Abstract

In September 2005, the Chilean Competition Authority filed a complaint against the 5 largest private health insurance providers for violation of antitrust laws. The 5 providers were accused of colluding to reduce the coverage of the plans offered to customers between March 2002 and March 2003. The main fact is that during that period these 5 providers reduced the coverage offered from 100% for hospitalization and 80% for ambulatory care to 90% and 70% respectively. As usual the observation of parallel conduct is not enough to infer collusion and it is required to observe additional factors that allow us to reject the hypothesis of providers behaving competitively. In this paper, we show that some specific characteristics of the health insurance markets generate barriers to entry and switching costs that allow the possibility of a collusive agreement. Then, we adapt an imperfect competition model of product differentiation to derive some testable propositions that allow us to distinguish between competition and collusion outcomes in the health insurance market in Chile. Finally, we show econometric evidence consistent with a collusive agreement among the 5 largest providers and inconsistent with a competitive equilibrium. . In particular, by comparing the prosecuted and non-prosecuted open Isapres before and during the collusive period, we show that sales efforts of the accused Isapres were reduced during the transition period toward lower-quality plans, that the profitability of the two groups of Isapres increased, and that the rate of transfers within the group of accused Isapres fell during the transition period.

Suggested Citation

  • Claudio Agostini & Eduardo Saavedra & Manuel Willington, 2008. "Collusion in the Private Health Insurance Market: Empirical Evidence for Chile," ILADES-UAH Working Papers inv206, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business.
  • Handle: RePEc:ila:ilades:inv206
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    Cited by:

    1. Guillem Roig, 2021. "Collusive equilibria with switching costs: The effect of consumer concentration," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 100-121, February.
    2. Ossandón, José, 2015. "Insurance and the sociologies of markets," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 17(1), pages 6-15.
    3. Claudio Agostini & Manuel Willington & Eduardo Saavedra, 2010. "Collusion among Helath Insures in Chile: Good, Bad and Ugly Reasons in a Split Decision," ILADES-UAH Working Papers inv256, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business.
    4. Roman-Urrestarazu, Andres & Yang, Justin C. & Ettelt, Stefanie & Thalmann, Inna & Seguel Ravest, Valeska & Brayne, Carol, 2018. "Private health insurance in Germany and Chile: two stories of co-existence, segmentation and conflict," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 90055, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tacit Collusion; Isapres; Health Insurance; Conscious Parallelism; Plus Factors.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets

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