Researchers from IESEG School of Management Report on Findings in Economic Behavior and Organization (Voluntary Pooling of Genetic Risk: a Health Insurance Experiment)

2021 FEB 25 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators discuss new findings in Economics - Economic Behavior and Organization. According to news reporting out of Paris, France, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “Scientific and technological advances increasingly allow for better tailoring of health insurance plans to individual health risk profiles. This development questions the sustainability of health plans that feature strong cross-subsidization across different health risk types and health behaviors.”

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the IESEG School of Management, “An important observation is that the willingness to cross-subsidize risks in health plans might depend on whether the risk is uncontrollable by individuals, such as genetic risk, or modifiable via health behaviors. This paper provides the results of an experiment on the willingness to pool genetic risk in health insurance. Subjects’ overall health risk has an assigned, uncontrollable genetic risk part that differs across individuals as well as a behavioral risk part, which can be reduced by costly effort. Participants can decide between a pooling, community-rated group insurance scheme and an insurance with a fully individually risk-adjusted premium. In the experimental variation, the group insurance scheme either includes behavioral risk or separates it out via individual premium discounts. Although we observe social preferences for pooling, only a low level of actual genetic risk pooling emerges across the experimental conditions.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “This is due to both large heterogeneity in social preferences across subjects, and the dynamics of the willingness to pay for group insurance in the different experimental markets.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Voluntary Pooling of Genetic Risk: a Health Insurance Experiment. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2020;180:864-882. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization can be contacted at: Elsevier, Radarweg 29, 1043 Nx Amsterdam, Netherlands. (Elsevier - www.elsevier.com; Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization - http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-economic-behavior-and-organization/)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Wanda Mimra, IESEG School of Management, Parvis Def, F-92044 Paris, France. Additional authors for this research include Janina Nemitz and Christian Waibel.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2019.04.001. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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