Bøker av Mark V. Pauly

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The authors offer principles for reform designed to encourage equity, efficiency, and accountability in all publicly funded health care programs.

The authors chronicle changes in U.S. attitudes about health care and consider policy trade-offs and problems of a tax credit/voucher system to finance health insurance.

This study analyzes the effects of a variety of forms of tax credits, especially for workers whose incomes place them above the poverty line but below the median family income.

Evidence suggests that cost-effective preventive measures are sometimes rewarded by insurers in ways that could change their clients' behavior. These examples reveal that insurance activities are not always in the best interest of individuals at risk. This book discusses such behavior with the intent of categorizing these insurance "anomalies".

Preface - Notes on the Contributors - Introduction; J.Finsinger and M.V.Pauly - GREAT BRITAIN - Regulation of the UK Insurance Industry; J.Tapp - UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - Regulation and Quality Competition in the US Insurance Industry; M.Pauly, H.Kunreuther and P.Kleindorfer - GERMANY - A State Controlled Market: The German Case; J.Finsinger - SWEDEN - The Regulation of the Swedish Insurance Industry; K.Skogh - SWITZERLAND - Insurance Regulation in Switzerland: An Outline with Special Reference to Life and Motor Car Liability Insurance; C.B.Blankart and F.Schneider - Regulation Induced Price Instability in Swiss Motor Car Liability Insurance; C.B.Blankart and J.Finsinger - FRANCE - The French Automobile and Life Insurance Markets; J.Finsinger and R.Waldmann - The French Insurance Market; J-F.Outreville - CANADA - The Economics of Life Insurance Regulation; G.F.Mathewson and R.A.Winter - Descriptive Evidence on the Canadian Insurance Industry; G.F.Mathewson and R.A.Winter - Index

Most people are offered health insurance through their jobs, and most still take it. But increasingly large numbers of workers have jobs in which coverage is not offered or where the terms under which it is offered do not induce them to take it. There is, however, an alternative to job-based insurance in which consumers could buy health insurance in the same way as they buy other kinds of insurances: voluntarily, as individual consumers, from private insurance firms. Because many of the uninsured appear to be permanent dropouts from the employment-based system, attention has turned to developing an improved individual insurance scheme.In Health Reform without Side Effects, Mark V. Pauly provides some alternatives to the reforms currently proposed by Congress. The legislation in progress, he asserts, is far from ideal and stands a good chance of making things worse rather than better. It runs the real risk of increasing the number of uninsured, stifling innovation in health insurance at a time when it is most needed, and creating dysfunctional incentives for both consumers and insurance companies. Reform that uses rather than abuses market forces, says the author, would be preferable.Pauly explains that the optimal government intervention provides appropriate subsidies to those who need them, a basic but limited regulatory framework, a large number of different qualified sources of insurance--for profit and nonprofit, public and private--and then permits consumers to make their own choices.. Should additional subsidies and regulations be required, they could more easily be added when needed than withdrawn if not needed.Competitive markets have their strongest rationale in settings in which the amount of knowledge a planner has or could have is incomplete, and, the author concludes, the individual health insurance market is a prime candidate for such a setting. Although there are some serious trade-offs among different policy features, the model of open, neutral competitive markets seems best suited to making those trade-offs under our current conditions.