Preferences For Health Insurance Research Articles

Consumer preferences for health insurance, in the wake of covid-19: Ranked features and customer segments

The current study is conceptualized to assess the perception of the general population towards health insurance providers and the policy features, to segment them based on their attitudes. The mixed-method design is used in this study. One fifty health insurance users response were analyzed. The data analysis technique includes focus group discussion, henry garret ranking method, factor analysis and cluster analysis. This study concludes that health insurance providers needs to devise insurance policies incorporating the features of home health, telemedicine and income protection features. The existing users should be offered customization option due to covid-19 to prevent customer switch.

Exploring geographic variation of and influencing factors for utilization of four diabetes management measures in Swiss population using claims data

IntroductionFour strongly recommended diabetes management measures are biannual glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) testing, annual eye examination, kidney function examination, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) testing in patients below 75 years. We aimed...

Eliciting Preferences for Health Insurance in Iran Using Discrete Choice Experiment Analysis.

Background: The preferences of Iranians concerning the attributes of health insurance benefit packages are not well studied. This study aimed to elicit health insurance preferences among insured people in Iran during 2016. Methods: A mixed methods study using a discrete choice experiment (DCE) approach was conducted to elicit health insurance preferences on a total sample of 600 insured Iranians residing in Tehran. The final design of the DCE included 8 health insurance attributes. Data were analyzed using conditional logistic regression models. Results: The final model of this DCE study included 8 attributes, and the findings indicated statistically significant (P<.001) increase in the odds ratio (OR) of choosing health insurance at all levels of cost coverage except for the rehabilitation and para-clinical benefits, where at 70% cost coverage there was insignificant (P=.485) disutility (OR=0.95). With the increase in cost coverage level, the probability of choosing health insurance was significantly (P<.001) the highest for the private hospitals’ benefits (OR=2.82) followed by public hospitals’ benefits (OR=2.02) and outpatient benefits (OR=1.75), and the premium revealed statistically significant (P<.001) disutility (OR=0.96). Conclusion: Our findings revealed that participants would be willing to choose health insurance plans with higher cost coverage of healthcare services and with lower premiums. However, the demographic characteristics, income, and health status of the insured individuals affected their health insurance preferences. The findings can contribute to the design of better health insurance policies, improve the participation of individuals in health insurance, and increase the insured individuals’ utility from the insurance benefits packages.

A Study of Health Insurance Preferences of Salaried Individuals in Urban Area – Study Background

Health Insurance is one of the fastest growing insurance businesses in India. Its penetration is still very low. Of late number of player's have entered the health insurance business and are offering variety of health insurance products. Preference, choice options, loyalty, satisfaction etc. are a series of marketing issues that dominate the health insurance purchasing decisions of the salaried class. This study tries to analyze such aspects based on a survey of 1000 respondents from the suburb of Kalyan-Dombivali area from Mumbai. The paper provides the framework for the study background and includes things like the study objectives, preliminaries of research design, expected outcome etc.

Evaluating health consumers' preferences stability through joint estimation of revealed and stated health insurance preferences data

This paper presents a variant of the mixed logit model, in the form of a panel-like error components mixed logit that relies on a multinomial logit formulation of the weighted logit formula, as opposed to the usual conditional logit representation; then uses the model to evaluate the consistency of consumers' preferences for health insurance by jointly modelling stated health insurance preferences with revealed health insurance choices of respondents from the 2007 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS). Estimation is implemented within the Bayesian paradigm using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, and the results suggest that 2007 MEPS respondents do present stable preferences for health insurance. In fact, respondents who initially express health insurance as not worth its cost are found to be 23.28% less likely to be privately insured and 81.53% less likely to be publicly insured. On the other hand, those initially expressing health insurance as worth its cost are found to be 21.72% more likely to be privately insured and 81.68% more likely to be publicly insured.

Evaluating health consumers' preferences stability through joint estimation of revealed and stated health insurance preferences data

This paper presents a variant of the mixed logit model, in the form of a panel-like error components mixed logit that relies on a multinomial logit formulation of the weighted logit formula, as opposed to the usual conditional logit representation; then uses the model to evaluate the consistency of consumers' preferences for heath insurance by jointly modeling the stated health insurance preferences and revealed health insurance choices of respondents from the 2007 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS). Estimation is implemented within the Bayesian paradigm using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) Methods, and the results suggest that 2007 MEPS respondents do present stable preferences for Health Insurance. In fact, compared to respondent with uncertain health insurance preferences, those initially expressing health insurance as not worth its cost are found to be 23.28% less likely to be privately insured and 81.53% less likely to be publicly insured. On the other hand, those initially expressing health insurance as worth its cost are found to be 21.72% more likely to be privately insured and 81.68% more likely to be publicly insured. Furthermore, the 58.25% gap in favor of private coverage suggest relatively more skepticism (dissatisfaction) toward public only coverage compared to having some private coverage.

Modeling Health Insurance Enrollment Decisions in the U.S., Under Preferences Endogeneity: A Bayesian Multinomial Probit Approach

Early work on consumer health insurance preference modeling suggests that workers sorting among employment alternatives reflect their tastes for employment-sponsored health insurance. Focusing on examining the role of health insurance preferences on enrollment decisions into employment sponsored health insurance, this past literature assumes the effects of health insurance preferences to be statistically exogenous. Therefore, extending analysis beyond employment sponsored health insurance preference modeling, while relaxing the exogeneity assumption, this article models the effects of stated consumption preferences for health insurance on revealed choices of health insurance using a framework in which stated consumption preferences are assumed to be endogenous in the statistical sense. A discrete choice analysis is implemented where both stated preferences and choice outcomes are modeled using multinomial probit and estimated within the Bayesian paradigm using a full Gibbs sampler. This estimation strategy is one of the first of its kind in consumer preference modeling, and improves computational efficiency and overall simplicity compared to related work using full information maximum likelihood. The analysis uses data from the 2007 medical expenditure panel survey, and the results provide substantial evidence on the importance of stated consumer preferences on revealed consumption choices of health insurance in the US.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Meets the ‘Persistently Uninsured’

AbstractUnder the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as ‘Obamacare’), the national uninsured rate has fallen from 17.3 per cent in 2013 to 11.7 per cent in the first half of 2015. While this is a substantial drop, even accounting for the states that did not expand Medicaid, the remaining double‐digit national rate, as well as higher rates in some states, indicates that a significant minority of Americans are not buying insurance. Researchers have identified a segment of the population with weak or uncertain preferences for health insurance. This article explores how such individuals are unevenly distributed across states and whether cultural preferences relating to time preference and risk aversion underlie the geographic distribution of the ‘persistently uninsured’. It concludes by reviewing the policy implications presented by the presence of numerous health insurance sceptics in certain jurisdictions.

Why 'Optimal' Payment for Healthcare Providers Can Never be Optimal Under Community Rating.

This article extends the existing literature on optimal provider payment by accounting for consumer heterogeneity in preferences for health insurance and healthcare. This heterogeneity breaks down the separation of the relationship between providers and the health insurer and the relationship between consumers and the insurer. Both experimental and market evidence for a high degree of heterogeneity are presented. Given heterogeneity, a uniform policy fails to effectively control moral hazard, while incentives for risk selection created by community rating cannot be neutralized through risk adjustment. Consumer heterogeneity spills over into relationships with providers, such that a uniform contract with providers also cannot be optimal. The decisive condition for ensuring optimality of provider payment is to replace community rating (which violates the principle of marginal cost pricing) with risk rating of contributions combined with subsidization targeted at high risks with low incomes.

Knowledge of and preferences for health insurance among formal sector employees in Addis Ababa: a qualitative study.

BackgroundThe Ethiopian health system has been undergoing through reforms. One of the reforms stipulated in policy documents is the introduction of health insurance at national level. Having the majority of the population without any experience of health insurance, investigating preferences and knowledge of the essence of health insurance among potential enrolees will provide vital information for policy makers. This formative study seeks to explore the knowledge and the preference for health insurance among formal sector employees in Addis Ababa.MethodsSix focus group discussions with formal sector employees and five key informant interviews were conducted in Addis Ababa. A thematic analysis is used to analyse the results.ResultsThe findings suggest that there is little knowledge about the concept and elements of health insurance. Some concepts such as, risk pooling and sharing are not well understood. The participants of the study considered health insurance as only a prepayment mechanism without risk sharing among members of the scheme. Regarding preference for health insurance, they have revealed quality of care as the most important factor. Comprehensiveness of benefit packages and the amount of premium level are also found to be concerns related to health insurance. However, a trade-off is also observed among premium level, comprehensive benefit packages, and healthcare facilities.ConclusionsImprovements on availability and quality of services need to precede the introduction of social health insurance. There is also a need to work on awareness creation regarding concepts of health insurance. Further studies may explore if the knowledge gap is real or appeared due to reservations of the participants on the introduction of health insurance.

Willingness to pay for health insurance among the elderly population in Germany.

All elderly Germans are legally obliged to have health insurance. About 90 % of this population are members of social health insurances (SHI) whose premiums are generally income-related and independent of health status. For most of these members, holding social health insurance is mandatory. As a consequence, genuine information about preferences for health insurance is not available. The aim of this study was therefore to determine and analyze the willingness to pay (WTP) for health insurance among elderly Germans. Data from a population-based 8-year follow-up of a large cohort study conducted in the Saarland, Germany was used. Participants aged 57-84 years passed a geriatric assessment and responded to a health economic questionnaire. Individuals' WTP was elicited based on a contingent valuation method with a payment card. Mean monthly WTP per capita for health insurance amounted to €260. This corresponded to about 20% of individual disposable income. Regression analyses showed that WTP increased significantly with higher income, male gender, higher educational level, and privately insured status. In contrast, neither increasing morbidity level nor higher individual health care costs influenced WTP significantly. The relatively large extent of average WTP for health insurance indicates that the elderly would probably accept higher contributions to SHI rather than policy efforts to reduce contributions. The identified determinants of WTP might indicate that elderly generally approve the principle of solidarity of the SHI with contributions depending on income rather than morbidity.

Preferences for health insurance in Germany and the Netherlands - a tale of two countries.

BackgroundThis contribution seeks to measure preferences for health insurance in Germany and the Netherlands, using two Discrete Choice Experiments (DCE). Since the Dutch DCE was carried out right after the 2006 health reform, which made citizens explicitly choose a health insurance contract, two research questions naturally arise. First, are the preferences with regard to contract attributes (such as Managed Care-type restrictions of physician choice), incentives (such as bonus options for no claims, deductibles, and a bonus for preventive behavior), and extra services provided by the health insurer (such as patient counseling) similar between the two countries? Second, was the requirement to explicitly choose imposed by the Dutch government in the context of the reform effective in reducing status quo bias with respect to future reforms?ResultsBased on random-effects Probit estimates, these two questions can be answered as follows. First, there is resistance against Managed Care-type attributes in both populations, but Germans would have to be compensated more for giving up free physician choice. Second, their status quo bias is twice as important as among their Dutch counterparts, who apparently learned to bear the cost of information associated with future choices concerning their health insurance.JEL codesC25, D12, I18

Understanding Health Insurance Needs for Small Businesses in the U.S. to Formulate the Information Technology Strategy

The majority of the workers are employees of a small business in the USA. A large percentage of these employees get healthcare insurance from their employers. However, there is a discrepancy between the employees and employers when it comes to health insurance preferences. This case presents a case study of a survey conducted by a health insurance company to formulate an information technology strategy. In the light of new health care reforms, the ASBC Company is planning to use the results of this survey to formulate an information technology strategy.

Understanding Consumer Preferences in the Context of Managed Competition

In many countries, health insurance coverage is the primary way for individuals to access care. Governments can support access through social insurance programmes; however, after a certain period, governments struggle to achieve universal coverage. Evidence suggests that complex individual behaviour may play a role. Using a choice experiment, this research explored consumer preferences for health insurance in Colombia. We also evaluated whether preferences differed across consumers with differing demographic and health status factors. A household field experiment was conducted in Bogotá in 2010. The sample consisted of 109 uninsured and 133 low-income insured individuals. Each individual evaluated 12 pair-wise comparisons of hypothetical health plans. We focused on six characteristics of health insurance: premium, out-of-pocket expenditure, chronic condition coverage, quality of care, family coverage and sick leave. A main effects orthogonal design was used to derive the 72 scenarios used in the choice experiment. Parameters were estimated using conditional logit models. Since price data were included, we estimated respondents' willingness to pay for characteristics. Consumers valued health benefits and family coverage more than other attributes. Additionally, differences in preferences can be exploited to increase coverage. The willingness to pay for benefits may partially cover the average cost of providing them. Policy makers might be able to encourage those insured via the subsidized system to enrol in the next level of the social health insurance scheme through expanding benefits to family members and expanding the level of chronic condition coverage.

Preferences for health insurance and health status: does it matter whether you are Dutch or German?

This contribution seeks to measure preferences for health insurance of individuals with and without chronic conditions in two countries, Germany and the Netherlands. The objective is to test the presumption that preferences between these two subpopulations differ and to see whether having a chronic condition has a different influence on preferences depending on the country. The evidence comes from two Discrete Choice Experiments performed in 2005 (Germany) and 2006 (the Netherlands, right after a major health reform). Results point to an even more marked resistance against restrictions of physician choice among individuals with chronic conditions in both countries. Thus, the alleged beneficiaries of Disease Management Programs would have to be highly compensated for accepting the restrictions that go with them.

Health Insurance Enrollment Decisions: Preferences for Coverage, Worker Sorting, and Insurance Take-up

The weak response by the uninsured to initiatives encouraging voluntary enrollment in health insurance has raised concerns regarding the extent to which the uninsured value insurance. This concern is also relevant for proposals to mandate health insurance coverage since workers will suffer welfare losses if compelled to purchase coverage they perceive to be of little value. To address this issue, we use the 2001 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to examine decisions by single workers to seek out and enroll in employer-sponsored insurance. We find that single workers with weak or uncertain preferences for health insurance are less likely to have jobs that offer coverage or to enroll in coverage when offered. Our results suggest a dual approach to expanding coverage that includes both subsidies and educational efforts regarding the value of health insurance.

THE EFFECT OF TAX PREFERENCES ON HEALTH SPENDING

In this paper, we estimate the effect of the tax preference for health insurance on health care spending using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys from 1996-2005. We use the fact that Social Security taxes are only levied on earnings below a statutory threshold to identify the impact of the tax preference. Because employer-sponsored health insurance premiums are excluded from Social Security payroll taxes, workers who earn just below the Social Security tax threshold receive a larger tax preference for health insurance than workers who earn just above it. We find a significant effect of the tax preference, consistent with previous research.

Employee demand for health insurance and employer health plan choices

Although most private health insurance in US is employment-based, little is known about how employers choose health plans for their employees. In this paper, I examine the relationship between employee preferences for health insurance and the health plans offered by employers. I find evidence that employee characteristics affect the generosity of the health plans offered by employers and the likelihood that employers offer a choice of plans. Although the results suggest that employers do respond to employee preferences in choosing health benefits, the effects of worker characteristics on plan offerings are quantitatively small.

Health Insurance Availability at the Workplace: How Important are Worker Preferences?

Analysts have frequently interpreted the uneven distribution of health insurance across firms of varying size as evidence of insurance market failure in the small group market. We explore an additional explanation by considering the relationship between employee preferences for health insurance and its availability at the workplace. We apply a simple model of job choice to data from the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey to examine whether workers with weak preferences for health insurance sort themselves into jobs without coverage. Our results for a sample of single workers are consistent with such sorting behavior.

Comment on "Medicare Benefits: A Reassessment"

Americans have repeatedly demonstrated their preference for health insurance against out-of-pocket payments for large medical bills. The proposed reliance on "competitive markets" is not likely to meet with public or congressional favor, and risks substantial new costs while promising little fiscal relief. A more modest proposal is offered.