IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/cesifo/v61y2015i2p484-519..html

International Portability of Health-Cost Cover: Mobility, Insurance, and Redistribution

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Werding
  • Stuart R. McLennan

Abstract

Public health insurance and other arrangements covering health costs effectively provide insurance against changes in health status. These arrangements engage in burden-smoothing over the life cycle and entail various elements of redistribution. Lack of portability regarding this type of cover may impede international mobility and create financial losses or windfall gains on various sides, which can lead to risk segmentation across national health systems. Existing portability rules do not fully address these problems. In this article, we try to clarify the implications of mobility for typical systems covering health costs and the requirements which have to be met to ensure full portability. When individuals are internationally mobile, compensating payments are needed based on changes in expected net costs in both of the health funds involved. Illustrative simulations show that this approach may be operative under real-world conditions. (JEL codes: F22, F55, H51, H73, J6).

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Werding & Stuart R. McLennan, 2015. "International Portability of Health-Cost Cover: Mobility, Insurance, and Redistribution," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 61(2), pages 484-519.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:cesifo:v:61:y:2015:i:2:p:484-519.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cesifo/ifu022
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Robert Holzmann, 2016. "Do bilateral social security agreements deliver on the portability of pensions and health care benefits? A summary policy paper on four migration corridors between EU and non-EU member states," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-35, December.
    2. Weidong Wu, 2024. "Promoting collaboration in regional healthcare systems in Hong Kong, Macao, and the mainland of China: midrange strategies," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-8, December.
    3. Robert Holzmann, 2016. "Taxing Pensions of an Internationally Mobile Labor Force: Portability Issues and Taxation Options," CESifo Working Paper Series 5715, CESifo.
    4. Robert Holzmann, 2018. "The portability of social benefits across borders," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 452-452, October.
    5. Werding, Martin & Läpple, Benjamin, 2022. "Finanzrisiken für den Bund durch die demographische Entwicklung in der Sozialversicherung: Reformszenarien," FiFo Reports - FiFo-Berichte 31, University of Cologne, FiFo Institute for Public Economics.
    6. Taha, N. & Messkoub, M. & Siegmann, K.A., 2013. "How portable is social security for migrant workers?," ISS Working Papers - General Series 50162, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS), The Hague.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
    • F55 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Institutional Arrangements
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • H73 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Interjurisdictional Differentials and Their Effects
    • J60 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - General

    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:oup:cesifo:v:61:y:2015:i:2:p:484-519.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    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.