La régulation de la demande de soins : le rôle de l’assurance maladie dans la formation de la consommation de biens et services de santé

Abstract

The regulation of health care demand : health insurance and the frame of individual health expenses According to the « moral hazard » hypothesis, a health insurance scheme which provides a high level of compensation of health expenditures offsets any incentive for individuals to restrain their resort to the health care system. Most of those studies find a strong and positive correlation between the size of the health insurance coverage and the amount of health expenditures. According to new figures that we also report, the gap between average ambulatory health expenditures of individuals who own a private supplementary health insurance scheme and of those who benefit only from the public health insurance scheme is estimated by + 29%. Part of this gap relies on the improvement of the health insurance coverage of low income people who entered the CMU. However, these outcomes bring a ground for policies which aim at monitoring the health care demand, using an adequate regulation of the reimbursement provided by the public and private insurance schemes. JEL classification : I11, I18