IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/doi10.1086-734781.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

German Long-Term Health Insurance: Theory Meets Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Juan Pablo Atal
  • Hanming Fang
  • Martin Karlsson
  • Nicolas R. Ziebarth

Abstract

German long-term health insurance (GLTHI) represents the largest market for private long-term health insurance contracts in the world. We show that GLTHI’s contract design coincides with the optimal dynamic contract for individuals with constant lifetime income profiles. After estimating the key ingredients of a life-cycle model, we find that, under a variety of assumptions, GLTHI achieves welfare that is at most 4% lower than for the optimal contract. Relative to the gains of replacing short-term contracts with either of the two long-term contracts, this welfare gap is smallest when reclassification risk is high.

Suggested Citation

  • Juan Pablo Atal & Hanming Fang & Martin Karlsson & Nicolas R. Ziebarth, 2025. "German Long-Term Health Insurance: Theory Meets Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 133(6), pages 1840-1885.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/734781
    DOI: 10.1086/734781
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/734781
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/734781
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/734781?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    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:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/734781. 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE .

    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.