Health insurance and health care utilization: Theory and evidence from Australia 1989-90, CHERE Discussion Paper No 44

The Australian hospital system is characterised by the co-existence of private hospitals, where individuals pay for services and public hospitals, where services are free to all but delivered after a waiting time. The decision to purchase insurance for private hospital treatment depends on the trade-off between price of treatment, waiting time and the insurance premium. Clearly the potential for adverse selection and moral hazard exists. When the endogeneity of the insurance decision is accounted for, the extent of moral hazard can be substantial increasing the expected length of a hospital stay by a factor of up to three.health insurance, hospitals, moral hazard, Australia

Do financial incentives for supplementary private health insurance reduce pressure on the public system? Evidence from Australia, CHERE Working Paper 2006/11

In many developed countries, budgetary pressures have made government investigate private insurance to reduce pressure on their public health system. Between 1997 and 2000 the Australian government implemented a series of reforms intended to increase enrollment in private health insurance and reduce public health care costs. Using the ABS 2001 National Health Survey, we examine the impact of increased insurance coverage on use of the hospital system, in particular on public and private admissions and lengths of stay. We model probability of hospital admission and length of stay for public (Medicare) and private patients. We use Propensity Score Matching to control for selection in the insurance decision and estimate a two-part model for hospital admission and length of stay on the matched sample. Our results indicate that there is selection associated with insurance choice. We also find that unconditional public patient and private patient lengths of stay in 2001 differ markedly depending on insurance duration. Those with shorter periods of insurance coverage behave more like the uninsured than those insured prior to the insurance incentives. While the insurance incentives substantially increased the proportion of the population with supplementary cover, the impact on use of the public system appears to be quite modest. Increased private usage outweighs reduced public usage and the insurance incentives appear to be an extremely costly way of reducing pressure on the public hospital system.Private Health Insurance, Australia

Health care policy evaluation: empirical analysis of the restrictions implied by Quality Adjusted Life Years, CHERE Working Paper 2006/10

This paper investigates the nature of the utility function for health care, defined over the probability of survival, survival duration, health state and cost of treatment. A discrete choice experiment, involving treatment choice for a hypothetical health condition is used to test restrictions on preferences in the QALY model. We find that preferences do not conform to expected utility, and there are significant interactions between health state and survival duration. Individual characteristics are significant, implying substantial differences in valuations of health states across the population. The results suggest the QALY approach distorts valuations of health outcomes.Discrete choice experiment, Qalys, preferences, health state valuation

The Economics of a Two Tier Health System: A Fairer Medicare?

This paper analyses a recent proposal of the Australian Government to reform the existing Medicare system. It develops models of the physician’s behaviour and of a household’s demand for medical insurance under the proposed system, and then proceeds to characterise the equilibrium under the new proposals. It argues that those most likely to be made worse off are low income households with children, though a full evaluation of the effects of the proposal requires it to be analysed in a public finance framework.health care, government policy, medical insurance

Does the reason for buying health insurance influence behaviour? CHERE Working Paper 2006/1

The inter-relationship between private health insurance cover and hospital utilisation is complex. The current policy approach in Australia appears to rely on relatively simple models of the relationships between health insurance coverage, and public and private hospital use. There is considerable evidence of unexplained heterogeneity among the privately insured population. Heterogeneity of preferences is likely to be important not just in determining the uptake of private health insurance, but also the impact of changes in private health insurance on the use of private treatment. A number of studies have used attitudinal variables to model heterogeneity of preferences in other contexts. This study uses the 2001 ABS National Health Survey to identify ?types? among the insured population using their stated reasons for purchasing private health insurance. We find that insurance type is significantly associated with hospital utilisation, particularly the probability of being admitted as a public or private patient. We also find that the government?s insurance incentives were more attractive to particular types of the insured population. This has implications for the effectiveness of the insurance incentives and for the design of policies that aim to reduce pressure on the public hospital system.Private health insurance, health policy, Australia

Healthy, wealthy and insured? The role of self-assessed health in the demand for private health insurance, CHERE Working Paper 2006/2

Both adverse selection and moral hazard models predict a positive relationship between risk and insurance; yet the most common finding in empirical studies of insurance is that of a negative correlation. In this paper we investigate the relationship between ex ante risk and private health insurance using data from the 2001 Australian National Health Survey (NHS). The Australian health system provides a setting where the relationship between risk and insurance is more transparent than many other institutional frameworks; private health insurance is not tied to employment; community rating limits the actions of insurers; and private coverage is high for a country providing free public hospital treatment. We find a strong positive association between self-assessed health and private health cover. We use the detailed information available in the NHS to investigate whether we can identify factors responsible for the negative correlation between risk (lower SAHS) and insurance cover. However this relationship persists despite the inclusion of a large set of controls for personal and socio-economic characteristics, risk-related behaviours, objective health measures and an index of mental health. The opposite effect of self-assessed health and long-term conditions on coverage suggests that SAHS is capturing factors such as personality or risk preferences.Private health insurance, self-assessed health, Australia

Out-of-pocket health expenditures in Australia: A semi-parametric analysis, CHERE Working Paper 2006/15

Out-of-pocket health expenditures in Australia are high in international comparisons and have been growing at a faster rate than most other health costs in recent years. This raises concerns about the extent to which out-of-pocket costs have constrained access to health services for low income households. Using data from the ABS Household Expenditure Survey 2003-04, we model the relationships between health expenditure shares and equivalised total expenditure for categories of out-of-pocket health expenditures and analyse the extent of protection given by concession cards. To allow for flexibility in the relationship we adopt a semi-parametric estimation technique following Yatchew (1997). We find mixed evidence for the protection health concession cards give against high out-of-pocket health expenditures. Despite higher levels of subsidy, households with concession cards have higher total health expenditure shares than other households. Surprisingly, the major drivers of the difference are not categories of expenditure where cards offer little or no protection, such as dental services and non-prescription medicines, but prescriptions costs, where concession cards guarantee a subsidy, and specialist consultations, where bulk billing rates would be expected to be higher for cardholders. This is the first detailed distributional analysis of household health expenditures in Australia.Out-of-pocket costs, international comparisons, Australia

A study of the social problems in the dramas of Sir Arthur Wing Pinero

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Kansas, English, 1916. ; Includes bibliographical references

Joiners and leavers stayers and abstainers: Private health insurance choices in Australia

The percentage of Australians taking up Private Health Insurance (PHI) was in decline following the introduction of Medicare in 1984 (PHIAC). To arrest this decline the Australian Government introduced a suite of policies, between 1997 and 2000, to create incentives for Australians to purchase private health insurance. These policies include an increased Medicare levy for those without PHI on high incomes, introduced in 1997, a 30% rebate for private hospital cover (introduced 1998), and the Lifetime Health Cover (LHC) policy where PHI premiums are set at age of entry, increasing for each year older than 30 years (introduced 2000). In 2004 the longitudinal study on Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA), included a series of questions on private health insurance and hospital use. We used the HILDA data to investigate the demographic, health and income factors related to the PHI decisions, especially around the introduction of the Lifetime Health Cover policy. Specifically we investigate who was most influenced to purchase PHI (specifically hospital cover) in 2000 as a response to the Lifetime Health Cover policy deadline. Are those who have joined PHI since the introduction of LHC different from those who joined prior to LHC? What are the characteristics of those who have dropped PHI since the introduction of LHC? We model the PHI outcomes allowing for heterogeneity of choice and correlation across alternatives. After controlling for other factors, we find that LHC prompted moderately well-off working age adults (30-49 yrs) to purchase before the 2000 deadline. Young singles or couples with no children, and the overseas born were more likely to purchase since 2000, while the relatively less well-off continue to drop PHI in spite of current policy incentives.private health insurance, incentives, Australia

Advantageous selection in private health insurance: The case of Australia

When consumers have private information about risk of suffering a loss, or equivalently, if insurers are prohibited from using observable information on risk in underwriting, theoretical models of insurance predict adverse selection. Yet the most common finding in empirical studies is that of no positive correlation between risk and insurance coverage. This is found for different types of insurance (e.g. car, health, life) and in different countries (e.g. France, US, UK, Israel) suggesting a fundamental relationship involving private information and consumer preferences. In this paper, we investigate the nature of risk selection in the Australian market for private health insurance in which community rated private health insurance complements a universal public health care system. We use National Health Survey data on hospital utilisation and individual characteristics to construct an empirical analogue for the risk variable in the Rothschild and Stiglitz model. Estimating the relationship between insurance and risk semi-parametrically, we find robust evidence of favourable selection. To explore the extent to which underlying risk preferences rather than risk drives the decision to purchase health insurance, we use Household Expenditure Survey data to model decisions to purchase a range of insurance products (health, life, accident, home, car) and to engage in risky behaviours (smoking and various forms of gambling). Correlations between residuals in the model suggest that advantageous selection is driven by risk aversion, which theoretical models do not typically capture.health insurance, adverse selection, Australia