Study Findings on Health Insurance Are Outlined in Reports from Maastricht University (Smoking behaviour and health care costs coverage: a European…

Study Findings on Health Insurance Are Outlined in Reports from Maastricht University (Smoking behaviour and health care costs coverage: a European cross-country comparison)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Managed Care Weekly Digest -- Investigators discuss new findings in Health Insurance. According to news reporting from Maastricht, Netherlands, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, "The empirical evidence about the effect of smoking on health care cost coverage is not consistent with the expectations based on the notion of adverse selection. This evidence is mostly based on correlational studies which cannot isolate the adverse selection effect from the moral hazard effect."

Financial support for this research came from Maastricht University (see also Health Insurance).

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from Maastricht University, "Exploiting data from the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe, this study uses an instrumental variable strategy to identify the causal effect of daily smoking on perceived health care cost coverage of those at age 50 or above in 12 European countries. Daily smoking is instrumented by a variable indicating whether or not there is any other daily smoker in the household. A self-assessment of health care cost coverage is used as the outcome measure. Among those who live with a partner (72% of the sample), the result is not statistically significant which means we find no effect of smoking on perceived health care cost coverage. However, among those who live without a partner, the results show that daily smokers have lower self-assessed perceived health care cost coverage. This finding replicates the same counter-intuitive relationship between smoking and health insurance presented in previous studies, but in a language of causality."

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: "In addition to this, we contribute to previous studies by a cross-country comparison which brings in different institutional arrangements, and by using the self-assessed perceived health care cost coverage which is broader than health insurance coverage."

For more information on this research see: Smoking behaviour and health care costs coverage: a European cross-country comparison. International Journal of Health Economics and Management, 2017;17(4):453-471. International Journal of Health Economics and Management can be contacted at: Springer, 233 Spring St, New York, NY 10013, USA.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting R. Rezayatmand, Maastricht University, Medical Center, CAPHRI, Fac Hlth Med & Life SciDept Hlth Serv Res, Maastricht, Netherlands. Additional authors for this research include W. Groot and M. Pavlova.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10754-017-9218-8. 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.

Keywords for this news article include: Maastricht, Netherlands, Europe, Health Insurance, Maastricht University.

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