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Is having private health insurance associated with less support for public healthcare? Evidence from the Norwegian NHS

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  • Martinussen, Pål E.
  • Magnussen, Jon

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether increased uptake of private health insurance (PHI) in a traditionally NHS type system is likely to affect support for the public healthcare system. Using the Norwegian healthcare system as our case, and building on a survey among 7500 citizens, with 2688 respondents, we employed multivariate analysis to uncover whether the preferences for public health services are associated with having PHI, controlling for key predictors such as socio-economic background, self-rated health and perceived health service quality, as well as age and gender. The basis for our analysis was the following two propositions related to the role of public healthcare, which the respondents were asked to score on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = “totally disagree”, 5 = “totally agree”): 1) “the responsibility of providing health services should mainly be public”, and 2) “the activity of private commercial actors should be limited”. The regression analyses showed that the willingness to increase the role of commercial private actors is positively associated with having a PHI. However, we found no relationship between holding a PHI and support for public provision of health services when other factors were controlled for.

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  • Martinussen, Pål E. & Magnussen, Jon, 2019. "Is having private health insurance associated with less support for public healthcare? Evidence from the Norwegian NHS," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 123(7), pages 675-680.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:123:y:2019:i:7:p:675-680
    DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2019.05.003
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Joan Costa‐Font & Mireia Jofre‐Bonet, 2008. "Is There A ‘Secession Of The Wealthy’? Private Health Insurance Uptake And National Health System Support," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(3), pages 265-287, July.
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    Cited by:

    1. De la O, Ana & Rossel, Cecilia & Manzi, Pilar, 2023. "Opting Out from Public Services and the Social Contract in Latin America," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 13285, Inter-American Development Bank.
    2. Pei-Jyun Lu & Jui-Yao Liu & Hsin Ma & Tzeng-Ji Chen & Li-Fang Chou & Shinn-Jang Hwang, 2022. "Characteristics of Clinics without National Health Insurance Contracts: A Nationwide Survey in Taiwan," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(3), pages 1-10, January.
    3. Lavaste, Konsta, 2023. "Private health insurance in the universal public healthcare system: The role of healthcare provision in Finland," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
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    5. De La O, Ana & Rossel, Cecilia & Manzi, Pilar, 2023. "Opting out from public services and the social contract in Latin America," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121025, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

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