TY  - JOUR
AU  - Glied,Sherry A.
TI  - Universal Public Health Insurance and Private Coverage: Externalities in Health Care Consumption 
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13885
PY  - 2008
Y2  - March 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13885
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13885.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Sherry A. Glied
Mailman School of Public Health
Columbia University
Department of Health Policy and Management
722 West 168th Street, Room 610
New York, NY 10032
Tel: 212/305-0299
Fax: 212/305-3405
E-Mail: sag1@columbia.edu
AB  - Inequality in access to health care services, through private purchase, appears to pose policy challenges greater than inequality in other spheres.  This paper explores how inequality in access to health care services relates to social welfare.  I examine the sources of private demand for health insurance and the ramifications of this demand for health, for patterns for government spending on health care services, and for individual and social well-being. Finally, I evaluate the implications of a health tax as a response to the externalities of health service consumption, and provide a rough measure of the tax in the context of the Canadian publicly-financed health care system.
ER  -