Can Insurance Increase Financial Risk? The Curious Case of Health Insurance in China

We analyze the effect of insurance on the probability of an individual incurring 'high' annual health expenses using data from three household surveys. All come from China, a country where providers are paid fee-for-service according to a schedule that encourages the overprovision of high-...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Wagstaff, Adam, Lindelow, Magnus
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	EN
Published:	2012
Subjects:	Insurance Insurance Companies G220 Health: General I100
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5012

id	okr-10986-5012
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-50122021-04-23T14:02:20Z Can Insurance Increase Financial Risk? The Curious Case of Health Insurance in China Wagstaff, Adam Lindelow, Magnus Insurance Insurance Companies G220 Health: General I100 We analyze the effect of insurance on the probability of an individual incurring 'high' annual health expenses using data from three household surveys. All come from China, a country where providers are paid fee-for-service according to a schedule that encourages the overprovision of high-tech care and who are only lightly regulated. We define annual spending as 'high' if it exceeds a threshold of local average income and as 'catastrophic' if it exceeds a threshold of the household's own per capita income. Our estimates allow for different thresholds and for the possible endogeneity of health insurance (we use instrumental variables and fixed effects). Our main results suggest that in all three surveys health insurance increases the risk of high and catastrophic spending. Further analysis suggests that this is due to insurance encouraging people to seek care when sick and to seek care from higher-level providers. 2012-03-30T07:30:50Z 2012-03-30T07:30:50Z 2008 Journal Article Journal of Health Economics 01676296 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5012 EN http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Journal Article China
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	EN
topic	Insurance Insurance Companies G220 Health: General I100
spellingShingle	Insurance Insurance Companies G220 Health: General I100 Wagstaff, Adam Lindelow, Magnus Can Insurance Increase Financial Risk? The Curious Case of Health Insurance in China
geographic_facet	China
relation	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo
description	We analyze the effect of insurance on the probability of an individual incurring 'high' annual health expenses using data from three household surveys. All come from China, a country where providers are paid fee-for-service according to a schedule that encourages the overprovision of high-tech care and who are only lightly regulated. We define annual spending as 'high' if it exceeds a threshold of local average income and as 'catastrophic' if it exceeds a threshold of the household's own per capita income. Our estimates allow for different thresholds and for the possible endogeneity of health insurance (we use instrumental variables and fixed effects). Our main results suggest that in all three surveys health insurance increases the risk of high and catastrophic spending. Further analysis suggests that this is due to insurance encouraging people to seek care when sick and to seek care from higher-level providers.
format	Journal Article
author	Wagstaff, Adam Lindelow, Magnus
author_facet	Wagstaff, Adam Lindelow, Magnus
author_sort	Wagstaff, Adam
title	Can Insurance Increase Financial Risk? The Curious Case of Health Insurance in China
title_short	Can Insurance Increase Financial Risk? The Curious Case of Health Insurance in China
title_full	Can Insurance Increase Financial Risk? The Curious Case of Health Insurance in China
title_fullStr	Can Insurance Increase Financial Risk? The Curious Case of Health Insurance in China
title_full_unstemmed	Can Insurance Increase Financial Risk? The Curious Case of Health Insurance in China
title_sort	can insurance increase financial risk? the curious case of health insurance in china
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5012
_version_	1764393593835880448

Can Insurance Increase Financial Risk? The Curious Case of Health Insurance in China

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