Logo Logo
Help
Contact
Switch Language to German
Kifmann, Mathias; Roeder, Kerstin (2011): Premium subsidies and social insurance: Substitutes or complements? hche Research Paper / Hamburg Center for Health Economics,
Full text not available from 'Open Access LMU'.

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 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 insurance is the optimal policy.