Selection and Behavioral Responses of Health Insurance Subsidies in the Long Run : Evidence from A Field Experiment in Ghana

We conduct a randomized experiment that varies one-time health insurance subsidy amounts (partial and full) in Ghana to study the impacts of subsidies on insurance enrollment and health care utilization. We find that both partial and full subsidies promote insurance enrollment in the long run, even after the subsidies expired. Although the long run enrollment rate and selective enrollment do not differ by subsidy level, long-run health care utilization increased only for the partial subsidy group. We provide evidence that this can plausibly be explained by stronger behavioral changes (learning-through-experience) in the partial subsidy group