Voluntary Private Health Care Insurance Among the Over Fifties in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of SHARE Data

Abstract. Using data from SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe), we analyze the effect of having a voluntary health insurance policy (VPHI) on out-of-pocket (OOP) health spending for individuals aged 50 or more in a host of European countries. We control for self selection into VPHI policy holding, and find that VPHI policy holders do not have lower OOP’s than the rest of the population: in Southern European countries they even spend more. We also find that the main determinants of VPHI are different in each country and this reflects the differences in the underlying health care systems. * An earlier version of this paper was presented at 1st SHARE–ELSA–HRS User Conference, 26–28 September 2005, Lund, Sweden. We thank conference participants and our discussant, Alberto Holly, for helpful comments. The SHARE data collection has been primarily funded by the European Commission through the 5th framework programme (projec