LCHE Seminar - Forward-looking behavior in health insurance

The Lausanne Center for Health Economics, Behavior, and Policy (LCHE) regularly organizes seminars about Health Economics. More details on www.lche.ch.

Topic of the Seminar

Forward-looking behavior in health insurance

We investigate whether patients adjust their healthcare utilization in anticipation of forthcoming price changes. Leveraging a natural experiment, we observe distinct probabilities of young adults facing future out-of-pocket cost increases. 

Based on an instrumental variable approach, we find that individuals expecting higher future prices augment current outpatient healthcare spending by approximately CHF 39 (or 5%). This behavior is confined to male patients already utilizing outpatient care, with no anticipatory spending in the inpatient sector. 

Our study underscores the significance of forward-looking behavior in healthcare demand analysis, health insurance design, and the potential welfare implications of patient cost-sharing.

Speaker

• PD Dr Christian P.R. Schmid
  • Christian P.R. Schmid is the director of the CSS Institute for Empirical Health Economics (Lucerne, Switzerland). He is also a lecturer at the University of Bern, where he also earned his doctorate in economics in 2014.

Practical information

• Free admission
• No need to register
• This seminar is given in English.

About LCHE

The Lausanne Center for Health Economics, Behavior, and Policy (LCHE) at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) promotes research, teaching, and policy advice in the fields of health economics, behavior, and policy.

The interdisciplinary center brings together researchers of the Center for Primary Care and Public Health (Unisanté), the Faculty of Biology and Medicine (CHUV-FBM), and the Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC).