Dear members,
I am a doctoral student in International Health Policy and Economics at
Harvard School of Public Health. I am currently studying the supplementary
health insurance market. I am particularly interested in the evolution of
this market in the context of health systems with universal insurance with
standardized benefits packages and regulated premiums, and that have
introduced some form of competition among health plans. So far I have
found most of the literature published is related to Medigap in the U.S.
and I have found a couple of papers about supplementary insurance in
Israel (Shmueli, 1996) and the U.K. (Propper).
I will greatly appreciate suggestions about additional sources of
information related to this topic: ongoing research, unpublished papers,
government documents, anecdotes, etc. that you might have.
Specifically I am trying to answer the following questions:
1. What supplemental insurance products are being offered ? (For example,
in the U.S. some Medigap covers deductibles, copayments, while in Colombia
and Israel some supplemental insurance is more of a "luxury" in the sense
that it covers private rooms or provides access to additional providers)
2. Who buys supplemental insurance (in terms of age, education, health
status, etc.)? Is there evidence of adverse selection or risk selection?
3. Are there differences in resource utilization among those with
supplemental insurance and those without it?
4. Is the supplemental insurance consumer well informed about the product
he is buying?
5. What have been the market failures leading to regulation of the
supplemental insurance market and what form have these regulations taken
in different countries?
Thank you all for your help,
Diana Pinto, M.D., M.H.A.
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