Subjective Expectations for Health Service Use and Consequences for Health Insurance Behavior
Nathan Kettlewell
No 13445, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
Abstract:
I evaluate the accuracy of people's subjective probability expectations for using various health services. Subjective expectations closely reflect patterns of observed utilization, are predicted by the same covariates as observed utilization, and correlate with objective measures of risk. At the same time, observable characteristics like age and health are weakly predictive of service demand. Through a series of examples, I demonstrate how subjective expectations can provide new insights about health behavior, specifically in the areas of asymmetric information, moral hazard and estimating welfare attributable to private care. The findings support collecting subjective expectations about health services in household surveys for use in applied research.
Keywords: subjective probabilities; beliefs; subjective expectations; health insurance; healthcare demand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 D84 I11 I12 I13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 65 pages
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ias
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Citations:
Published - published as 'The informational content of subjective expectations for health service use' in: BMC Health Services Research, 2021, 21, 464 (2021)
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