2010-04-01
Supplemental health insurance and equality of access in Belgium
Publication
Publication
Health Economics , Volume 19 - Issue 4 p. 377- 395
The effects of supplemental health insurance on health-care consumption crucially depend on specific institutional features of the health-care system. We analyse the situation in Belgium, a country with a very broad coverage in compulsory social health insurance and where supplemental insurance mainly refers to extra-billing in hospitals. Within this institutional background, we find only weak evidence of adverse selection in the coverage of supplemental health insurance. We find much stronger effects of socio-economic background. We estimate a bivariate probit model and cannot reject the assumption of exogeneity of insurance availability for the explanation of health-care use. A count model for hospital care shows that supplemental insurance has no significant effect on the number of spells, but a negative effect on the number of nights per spell. We comment on the implications of our findings for equality of access to health care in Belgium. Copyright
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| doi.org/10.1002/hec.1478, hdl.handle.net/1765/37510 | |
| Health Economics | |
| Organisation | Erasmus School of Economics |
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Schokkaert, S., van Ourti, T., de Graeve, D., Lecluyse, A., & van de Voorde, C. (2010). Supplemental health insurance and equality of access in Belgium. Health Economics (Vol. 19, pp. 377–395). doi:10.1002/hec.1478 |
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