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来源类型 | Working Paper |
规范类型 | 报告 |
DOI | 10.3386/w17857 |
来源ID | Working Paper 17857 |
Insurance as Delegated Purchasing: Theory and Evidence from Health Care | |
Robin McKnight; Jonathan Reuter; Eric Zitzewitz | |
发表日期 | 2012-02-23 |
出版年 | 2012 |
语种 | 英语 |
摘要 | Household demand for actuarially unfair insurance against small risks has long puzzled economists. One way to potentially rationalize this demand is to recognize that (non-life) insurance is an incentive-compatible means of engaging an expert buyer. To quantify the benefits of expert buying, we compare prices paid by the insured and uninsured for health care. In categories of health care where uncompensated care is more difficult to obtain (drugs, doctor office visits, and hospital outpatient visits), we find that insurers pay 10-20% less than the uninsured. For forms of care where payment by the uninsured is more likely to be negotiated after services are rendered (hospitalizations and emergency room visits) the uninsured pay about 30% less on average, due largely to the nontrivial share of uninsured who pay 5% or less of their billed charges. At least in settings where free services are difficult to obtain, expert buying is an important benefit of insurance. We discuss the implications of the delegated-purchasing view of insurance for con-sumer-driven health insurance and for self-insurance by employers. |
主题 | Financial Economics ; Financial Institutions ; Health, Education, and Welfare ; Health |
URL | https://www.nber.org/papers/w17857 |
来源智库 | National Bureau of Economic Research (United States) |
引用统计 | |
资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/575532 |
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Robin McKnight,Jonathan Reuter,Eric Zitzewitz. Insurance as Delegated Purchasing: Theory and Evidence from Health Care. 2012. |
条目包含的文件 | ||||||
文件名称/大小 | 资源类型 | 版本类型 | 开放类型 | 使用许可 | ||
w17857.pdf(450KB) | 智库出版物 | 限制开放 | CC BY-NC-SA | 浏览 |
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