Insurance Careers Background The insurance industry provides protection for its customers against financial loss from various hazards. This protection is offered in the form of insurance policies. The industry is a massive, highly complex one that has grown out of an ancient and very simple principle: The more people who share a financial risk, the
Insurance markets in the US traditionally have been regulated at the state level. This tradition was reinforced by the 1945 McCarran–Ferguson Act, which exempted the business of insurance from federal antitrust oversight as long as the individual states regulated the insurance business. Much of the early health insurance regulation related to reserve requirements and sales
This article explores the economic theory and evidence regarding supplementary private health insurance in countries with national health insurance systems. It defines voluntary health insurance for the purpose of the article, and classifies the different roles played by voluntary private health insurance. It will then examine the economic literature on voluntary private health insurance, beginning
Introduction Supplemental Insurance In many countries with public health insurance coverage, individuals have the option to purchase additional coverage from private health insurers to supplement public coverage. This additional coverage can either duplicate public coverage or fill in gaps (supplement) in the public plan, such as covering services outside the public benefit package or filling
Introduction The US healthcare system has widely acknowledged problems with cost, quality, and access. Medical spending is higher than that in any other country, at 17.6% of GDP in 2009, and rising at a rapid rate; such a cost trajectory is unsustainable. Meanwhile, quality is often lacking, and lags behind that of many other nations
Long-term care is a sector of the healthcare industry that is growing in importance with the aging of populations around the world. In the United States, according to the Congressional Budget Office, expenditures on long-term care totaled US$135 billion in 2004 and are expected to double in several decades. People with long-term care needs generally
As compared to public insurance systems, private systems face a unique set of market problems that have occupied a central position in health economics research. These ethical and efficiency problems that arise in market transactions plague national insurance systems to a much lesser degree and involve different solutions. This article first considers the reasons why
Introduction Institutional arrangements for health insurance long predate efficacious courses of therapy or even accurate diagnostic techniques. Let health insurance be a type of insurance in which the benefit payment is triggered by an adverse health event. Nowadays the payment is generally intended to pay the costs of health care: physicians and nurses, equipment, drugs
Health insurance often seems confusing and can be difficult to navigate for even the most knowledgeable consumer. It is one of the most talked about topics in political elections and has received considerable media attention because of the rules and restrictions placed on people who have insurance and the plight of the growing numbers of