题目：Optimal Health Insurance for Multiple Goods and Time Periods

时  间：2010年11月10日  星期三 12:00 – 14:00

地  点：明德主楼714

报 告 人：姜神怡

Abstract: This paper reexamines the efficiency-based arguments for optimal health insurance, extending the classic analysis to consider both multiple treatment goods and multiple time periods. Using a utility-based framework, we reconfirm the conventional tradeoff between risk aversion and moral hazard for insuring treatment goods. Multiple goods and multiple time periods raise issues of  both complementarity and of correlated losses that affect the choice of optimal insurance. Substitutes and positively correlated demands over goods or over time are shown to reduce optimal cost shares on treatment. In a multiperiod model, savings complicate the optimal insurance rules but positively serially correlated errors generally imply improved coverage is desirable. Further, the presence of positively correlated uncompensated costs also leads to reducing the cost sharing on the covered services. Using insurance claims data we examine the empirical relevance of the contemporaneous correlations across goods, and correlations over time using three broad aggregates of health treatment spending: inpatient, outpatient, and pharmaceuticals. Our model provides a rationale for covering pharmaceuticals more fully than is implied by static models, because it is relatively highly correlated over time, especially with high deductibles.

报告人简介：姜神怡博士，中国人民大学汉青经济与金融高级研究院助理教授。2001年武汉大学国际数理经济试验班，获经济学、数学学士2005年波士顿大学经济系，获政治经济学硕士，2010年波士顿大学经济系，获经济学博士。研究方向为卫生经济学。