The demand for private health insurance: do waiting lists matter?

Abstract

In spite of government dominance in financing health care in many countries, the private health care sector remains important. This is true even though most public provision is heavily subsidized, and in many cases free, at source. Britain's National Health Service fails to drive out the private sector because it suffers from certain inflexibilities. Here, we show that longer waiting lists for NHS treatment are associated with greater purchases of private health insurance