infonet-economy

The share of the public sector in health insurance provision
varies enormously from country to country. It is larger in more redistributive countries. We provide a possible theoretical explanation for these facts: a public health insurance system, fi nanced by taxes, can be an effi cient means of redistribution, complementary to income taxation. This relies on the assumption of a negative correlation between income and morbidity. We examine the empirical validity of this assumption on macro data.