IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_1620.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Concerns for Equity and the Optimal Co-Payments for Publicly Provided Health Care

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Hoel

Abstract

In countries where health care is publicly provided and where equity considerations play an important role in policy decisions, it is often argued that an increase in co-payments is unacceptable as it will be particularly harmful to the less well-off in society. The present paper derives socially optimal co-payments in a simple model of health care where people differ in income and in severity of illness. The social optimum depends on the welfare weights given to persons with different levels of expected utility. Increased concern for equity may increase optimal co-payments for illnesses with homogeneous severity across the population. For illnesses where the severity varies strongly across the population, optimal co-payments go down as a response to increased concern for equity, provided income differences in the society are sufficiently small.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Hoel, 2005. "Concerns for Equity and the Optimal Co-Payments for Publicly Provided Health Care," CESifo Working Paper Series 1620, CESifo.
  • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1620
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp1620.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ching‐To Albert Ma & Michael H. Riordan, 2002. "Health Insurance, Moral Hazard, and Managed Care," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(1), pages 81-107, March.
    2. Steven Shavell, 1979. "On Moral Hazard and Insurance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(4), pages 541-562.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Heijdra, Ben J. & Ligthart, Jenny E., 2010. "The Transitional Dynamics Of Fiscal Policy In Small Open Economies," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(1), pages 1-28, February.
    2. repec:dau:papers:123456789/179 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Stenbacka Rune & Tombak Mihkel, 2018. "Optimal Reimbursement Policy in Health Care: Competition, Ownership Structure and Quality Provision," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 18(1), pages 1-19, January.
    4. Rune Stenbacka & Mihkel Tombak, 2014. "Optimal Co-Payment Policy In Health Care: Competition, Ownership Structure And Quality Provision," Working Papers 140004, Canadian Centre for Health Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Weining Bao & Jian Ni & Shubhranshu Singh, 2024. "Educational Inequality and Reservation Policy in Developing Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(5), pages 3162-3181, May.
    2. S. Alex Yang & Nitin Bakshi & Christopher J. Chen, 2021. "Trade Credit Insurance: Operational Value and Contract Choice," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(2), pages 875-891, February.
    3. Andersson, Fredrik & Skogh, Goran, 2003. "Quality, self-regulation, and competition: the case of insurance," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 267-280, April.
    4. Stenbacka Rune & Tombak Mihkel, 2018. "Optimal Reimbursement Policy in Health Care: Competition, Ownership Structure and Quality Provision," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 18(1), pages 1-19, January.
    5. Sinn, Hans-Werner, 2004. "The pay-as-you-go pension system as fertility insurance and an enforcement device," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(7-8), pages 1335-1357, July.
    6. Jean Pinquet & Georges Dionne & Charles Vanasse & Mathieu Maurice, 2007. "Point-record incentives, asymmetric information and dynamic data," Working Papers hal-00243056, HAL.
    7. Hans-Werner Sinn, 1996. "Social insurance, incentives and risk taking," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 3(3), pages 259-280, July.
    8. Huennemeyer, Anne-Juliane & McKitrick, Ross & Rollins, Kimberly S., 1999. "Optimal Compensation For Endangered Species Protection Under Asymmetric Information," 1999 Annual meeting, August 8-11, Nashville, TN 21693, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    9. James M. Malcomson, 2004. "Health Service Gatekeepers," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 35(2), pages 401-421, Summer.
    10. Dionne, Georges & Vanasse, Charles, 1997. "Une évaluation empirique de la nouvelle tarification de l’assurance automobile (1992) au Québec," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 73(1), pages 47-80, mars-juin.
    11. Jung Koo Kang & Christopher D. Williams & Regina Wittenberg-Moerman, 2021. "CDS trading and nonrelationship lending dynamics," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 258-292, March.
    12. Georges Dionne & Casey G. Rothschild, 2011. "Risk Classification in Insurance Contracting," Cahiers de recherche 1137, CIRPEE.
    13. Wu, T.C. Michael & Yang, C.C., 2014. "Income tax deductions for losses as insurance revisited," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 274-280.
    14. Luis Rizzi, 2008. "Integrating Travel Delays, Road Safety, Care, Vehicle Insurance and Cost-Benefit Analysis of Road Capacity Expansion in a Unified Framework," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 125-140, September.
    15. Hicks, Robert L. & Parks, Bradley C. & Tierney, Michael J., 2005. "Explaining the Allocation of Bilateral and Multilateral Environmental Aid to Developing Countries," 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI 19346, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    16. Lakdawalla, Darius & Zanjani, George, 2005. "Insurance, self-protection, and the economics of terrorism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(9-10), pages 1891-1905, September.
    17. Thomas J. Miceli, 1989. "Housing Rental Contracts and Adverse Selection with an Application to the Rent‐Own Decision," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 17(4), pages 403-421, December.
    18. Udo Schneider & Jürgen Zerth, 2011. "Improving Prevention Compliance through Appropriate Incentives: Theoretical Modelling and Empirical Evidence," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 147(I), pages 71-106, March.
    19. Alois Geyer & Daniela Kremslehner & Alexander Muermann, 2020. "Asymmetric Information in Automobile Insurance: Evidence From Driving Behavior," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 87(4), pages 969-995, December.
    20. Sebastian Soika, 2018. "Moral Hazard and Advantageous Selection in Private Disability Insurance," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 43(1), pages 97-125, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    public health; co-payments; equity concerns;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ces:ceswps:_1620. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (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.