We seek to explain why countries have adopted national Old-Age Insurance and Health Insurance programs. Theoretical … relate the probability of a country’s creating social insurance to proxies for each of these theories. We find weak evidence …, none of the theories is very strongly related to system adoption. We conclude that social insurance can be politically …

Background: Policymakers have recently proposed ways of providing health care coverage for an increased number of … insurance have changed over time. Methods: We used two data sets from the Survey of Income and Program Participation of the U … for some period of time and the probability that a person would subsequently obtain private or public insurance. We also …

This study assesses the factors influencing the movement of people across health plans. We distinguish three types of … cost-related transitions: adverse selection, the movement of the less healthy to more generous plans; adverse retention … plans with initially older enrollees increase in cost over time. Using data from the Group Insurance Commission in …

Standard theories of insurance, dating from Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976), stress the role of adverse selection in … engage in risk reducing behavior are systematically less likely to hold life insurance, acute private health insurance … explaining the decision to purchase insurance. In these models, higher risk people buy full or near-full insurance, while lower …

for non-random selection into treatment with instrumental variables; following McClellan, McNeil, and Newhouse, the …

Integrating the health services and insurance industries, as health maintenance organizations (HMOs) do, could lower … and traditional insurance plans using two datasets from Massachusetts. The nature of these health problems should minimize … selection. HMOs have 30% to 40% lower expenditures than do traditional plans. Both actual treatments and health outcomes differ …

internalities justify government action. I then turn to markets for medical care and health insurance. Virtually all governments … provide health insurance for some part of the population. Governments face several fundamental choices in this provision. The … employer payments for health insurance from income taxation. The welfare loss from this subsidy has been a theme of much …

correct distortions in markets for medical care and health insurance. Markets for health insurance have traditionally not …This paper reviews the public sector role in the provision of health care. A first role of the government is to use tax … overutilized. Policies to increase choice in insurance markets could increase welfare, provided they limit segmentation on the …