Premium subsidies and social health insurance: Substitutes or complements?

B-Tier
Journal: Journal of Health Economics
Year: 2011
Volume: 30
Issue: 6
Pages: 1207-1218

Score contribution per author:

1.005 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 1.0x B-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

Premium subsidies have been advocated as an alternative to social health insurance. These subsidies are paid if expenditure on health insurance exceeds a given share of income. In this paper, we examine whether this approach is superior to social health insurance from a welfare perspective. We show that the results crucially depend on the correlation of health and productivity. For a positive correlation, we find that combining premium subsidies with social health insurance is the optimal policy.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:jhecon:v:30:y:2011:i:6:p:1207-1218
Journal Field
Health
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-25