Estimating the tradeoff between risk protection and moral hazard with a nonlinear budget set model of health insurance

Estimating the tradeoff between risk protection and moral hazard with a nonlinear budget set model of health insurance
Author: Amanda E. Kowalski
Publisher:
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2012
Genre: Economics
ISBN:

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Insurance induces a well-known tradeoff between the welfare gains from risk protection and the welfare losses from moral hazard. Empirical work traditionally estimates each side of the tradeoff separately, potentially yielding mutually inconsistent results. I develop a nonlinear budget set model of health insurance that allows for the calculation of both sides of the tradeoff simultaneously, allowing for a relationship between moral hazard and risk protection. An important feature of this model is that it considers nonlinearities in the consumer budget set that arise from deductibles, coinsurance rates, and stoplosses that alter moral hazard as well as risk protection relative to no insurance. I illustrate the properties of my model by estimating it using data on employer sponsored health insurance from a large firm. Within my empirical context, the average deadweight losses from moral hazard substantially outweigh the average welfare gains from risk protection. However, the welfare impact of moral hazard and risk protection are both small relative to transfers from the government through the tax preference for employer sponsored health insurance and transfers from some agents to other agents through a common premium.

Health Insurance: The Trade-Off Between Risk Pooling and Moral Hazard

Health Insurance: The Trade-Off Between Risk Pooling and Moral Hazard
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 67
Release: 1989
Genre:
ISBN:

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Choosing economically optimal health insurance coverage involves a trade-off between risk reduction and the overuse of health care. The economic purpose of insurance is to reduce financial uncertainty or risk - the more health insurance lowers the risk, the greater will be the increase in social well-being. But increases in health insurance also increase the amount of medical care demand, because insurance lowers the out-of-pocket cost of health care - the larger the demand response of medical care to cost sharing, the greater the decrease in social well-being, due to the purchase of too much health care. This study examines this trade-off empirically by estimating both the demand for health insurance and the demand for health services. It relies on data from a randomized controlled trial of the cost sharing's effects on the use of health services and on the health status for a general, nonelderly (under age 65) population.

Health Insurance

Health Insurance
Author: Willard G. Manning
Publisher:
Total Pages: 639
Release: 1997
Genre: Health insurance
ISBN:

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Choosing optimal health insurance coverage involves a trade-off between the gain from risk reduction and the deadweight loss from moral hazard. This paper examines this trade-off empirically by estimating both the demand for health insurance and the demand for health services. It relies on data from a randomized controlled trial of cost-sharing's effects on the use of health services and on the health status for a general, non-elderly population.

Disentangling Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection in Private Health Insurance

Disentangling Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection in Private Health Insurance
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2016
Genre:
ISBN:

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Moral hazard and adverse selection create inefficiencies in private health insurance markets and understanding the relative importance of each factor is critical for policy. We use claims data from a large firm to isolate moral hazard from plan selection. Previous studies have attempted to estimate moral hazard in private health insurance by assuming that individuals respond only to the spot price, end-of-year price, expected price, or a related metric. The nonlinear budget constraints generated by health insurance plans make these assumptions especially poor and we statistically reject their appropriateness. We study the differential impact of the health insurance plans offered by the firm on the entire distribution of medical expenditures without assuming that individuals only respond to a parameterized price. Our empirical strategy exploits the introduction of new plans during the sample period as a shock to plan generosity, and we account for sample attrition over time. We use an instrumental variable quantile estimation technique that provides quantile treatment effects for each plan, while conditioning on a set of covariates for identification purposes. This technique allows us to map the resulting estimated medical expenditure distributions to the nonlinear budget sets generated by each plan. We estimate that 53% of the additional medical spending observed in the most generous plan in our data relative to the least generous is due to moral hazard. The remainder can be attributed to adverse selection. A policy which resulted in each person enrolling in the least generous plan would cause the annual premium of that plan to rise by $1,000.

Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection in Private Health Insurance

Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection in Private Health Insurance
Author: David Powell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre:
ISBN:

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Moral hazard and adverse selection create inefficiencies in private health insurance markets. The authors use claims data from a large firm to study the independent roles of both moral hazard and adverse selection. Previous studies have attempted to estimate moral hazard in private health insurance by assuming that individuals respond only to the spot price, end-of-year price, average price, or a related metric. There is little economic justification for such assumptions and, in fact, economic intuition suggests that the nonlinear budget constraints generated by health insurance plans make these assumptions especially poor. They study the differential impact of the health insurance plans offered by the firm on the entire distribution of medical expenditures without parameterizing the plans by a specific metric. They use a new instrumental variable quantile estimation technique introduced in Powell (2013b) that provides the quantile treatment effects for each plan, while conditioning on a set of covariates for identification purposes. This technique allows us to map the resulting estimated medical expenditure distributions to the nonlinear budget sets generated by each plan. Their method also allows them to separate moral hazard from adverse selection and estimate their relative importance. They estimate that 77% of the additional medical spending observed in the most generous plan in their data relative to the least generous is due to adverse selection. The remainder can be attributed to moral hazard. A policy which resulted in each person enrolling in the least generous plan would cause the annual premium of that plan to rise by over $1,500.

The Economics of Health and Health Care

The Economics of Health and Health Care
Author: Sherman Folland
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 921
Release: 2024-01-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000985288

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The Economics of Health and Health Care is the market-leading health economics textbook, providing comprehensive coverage of all the key topics, and balancing economic theory, empirical evidence, and public policy. The ninth edition offers updated material throughout, including two new chapters: Disparities in Health and Health Care (Chapter 7) examines issues of race, ethnicity, income, gender, and geography with respect to health care access, health inputs, and health outcomes; Pandemic Economics (Chapter 9) introduces a new and simplified economic treatment of epidemics and pandemics within the context of COVID-19. We also include applications from the growing literature on digital medicine. The book further highlights the impacts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and updates its path-breaking comparative analyses across countries to focus on the differences in access and costs. The book continues to provide a clear, step-by-step understanding of health economics, making economic principles accessible to students, supported by boxed examples, figures and tables. Each chapter contains concise summaries, discussion questions, and quantitative exercises to promote student learning. There is also a glossary of key terms and an extensive reference list. Instructors are supported by a range of digital supplements. It is the perfect textbook for students and practitioners taking undergraduate and postgraduate courses in health economics, health policy, and public health.

Fatal Tradeoffs

Fatal Tradeoffs
Author: W. Kip Viscusi
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 321
Release: 1992
Genre: Decision-making
ISBN: 0195102932

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Examining issues related to the social regulation of risk, this volume contains essays on the value of life, empirical estimates of the value of life, the rationality of individual responses to risk, the effect of government risk regulation efforts, and the role of the courts and insurance.

Moral Hazard in Health Insurance

Moral Hazard in Health Insurance
Author: Amy Finkelstein
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2014-12-02
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0231538685

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Addressing the challenge of covering heath care expenses—while minimizing economic risks. Moral hazard—the tendency to change behavior when the cost of that behavior will be borne by others—is a particularly tricky question when considering health care. Kenneth J. Arrow’s seminal 1963 paper on this topic (included in this volume) was one of the first to explore the implication of moral hazard for health care, and Amy Finkelstein—recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic—here examines this issue in the context of contemporary American health care policy. Drawing on research from both the original RAND Health Insurance Experiment and her own research, including a 2008 Health Insurance Experiment in Oregon, Finkelstein presents compelling evidence that health insurance does indeed affect medical spending and encourages policy solutions that acknowledge and account for this. The volume also features commentaries and insights from other renowned economists, including an introduction by Joseph P. Newhouse that provides context for the discussion, a commentary from Jonathan Gruber that considers provider-side moral hazard, and reflections from Joseph E. Stiglitz and Kenneth J. Arrow. “Reads like a fireside chat among a group of distinguished, articulate health economists.” —Choice

Behavioral Hazard in Health Insurance

Behavioral Hazard in Health Insurance
Author: Katherine Baicker
Publisher:
Total Pages: 62
Release: 2012
Genre: Copayments (Insurance)
ISBN:

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This paper develops a model of health insurance that incorporates behavioral biases. In the traditional model, people who are insured overuse low value medical care because of moral hazard. There is ample evidence, though, of a different inefficiency: people underuse high value medical care because they make mistakes. Such "behavioral hazard" changes the fundamental tradeoff between insurance and incentives. With only moral hazard, raising copays increases the efficiency of demand by ameliorating overuse. With the addition of behavioral hazard, raising copays may reduce efficiency by exaggerating underuse. This means that estimating the demand response is no longer enough for setting optimal copays; the health response needs to be considered as well. This provides a theoretical foundation for value-based insurance design: for some high value treatments, for example, copays should be zero (or even negative). Empirically, this reinterpretation of demand proves important, since high value care is often as elastic as low value care. For example, calibration using data from a field experiment suggests that omitting behavioral hazard leads to welfare estimates that can be both wrong in sign and off by an order of magnitude. Optimally designed insurance can thus increase health care efficiency as well as provide financial protection, suggesting the potential for market failure when private insurers are not fully incentivized to counteract behavioral biases.

Moral Hazard, Adverse Selection and Health Expenditures

Moral Hazard, Adverse Selection and Health Expenditures
Author: Patrick Bajari
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre:
ISBN:

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Theoretical models predict asymmetric information in health insurance markets may generate inefficient outcomes due to adverse selection and moral hazard. However, previous empirical research has found it difficult to disentangle adverse selection from moral hazard in health care. We empirically study this question by a using unique data set with confidential information from a large self-insured employer to estimate a structural model of the demand for health insurance and medical care. We propose a two-step semi-parametric estimation strategy that builds on the work on identification and estimation of auction models. We find significant evidence of moral hazard and adverse selection.