摘要

This paper considers the welfare effects of health insurance. With a rather general model, we show that the presence of traditional health insurance makes consumers worse off when the marginal cost of health care is low enough, while always making the health care provider better off. The presence of traditional health insurance increases social welfare, but cannot achieve the socially optimal outcome. Furthermore, we consider a market structure called "integrated health insurance" and show that in a health care market where a firm provides not only health care but also health insurance, the socially optimal outcome can be achieved.

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