Connaissance du contrat complémentaire santé et écart assurantiel

In France, the national health insurance (NHI) covers the majority of health expenses, the rest being more or less covered by the complementary health insurance (CHI). But do insured persons really know their CHI contract? This empirical work explores administrative data matched with survey data providing information on usually unobserved characteristics (health status or risk aversion). First, we identify the factors that influence policyholders’ knowledge of their contract, then we analyze the gap between reimbursements and contributions using quantile regressions. Paradoxically, this gap does not seem to be widened by the consumption of so-called “comfort” care but rather by hospital care. Moreover, a better knowledge of one’s contract seems to be beneficial.