Improving Takeup of Health Insurance Program: A Social Experiment in France

This paper is based on a randomized experiment conducted in order to understand the low takeup rate of a complementary health-insurance voucher program for the poorest in France. We explore two of the main hypotheses put forward to explain low enrollment: difficulties in accessing information about the program and a voucher amount considered to be too low. Results show that a voucher increase has a small but significant effect on takeup and the invitation to an information meeting discourages it. This study confirms the difficulties that are faced in increasing the healthinsurance coverage of poor populations via subsidy programs.