The authors investigate the extent to which adverse selection and moral hazard influence private health insurance demand in Brazil, based on the 1998 National Socioeconomic and Health Survey. Three population groups were compared, namely the one whose private health insurance was acquired by their employers, a second group whose insurance was individually acquired directly from insurance providers, and finally the one without any type of private health insurance and exclusively assisted by public health services. A taxonomy of health insurance plans was developed, and other covariates were also considered in the analysis, namely health states, health care services use, and health insurance coverage. The results suggest the occurrence of both types of market failures. Private health insurance coverage was found to be associated with unfavorable self-reported health states while the type of coverage appears to be associated with a more frequent use of health services. Multivariate logistic regression analyses, with multiple controls, showed that only health care expenditures remained associated with both adverse selection and moral hazard. Although a clear cut pattern of asymmetric information was not observed, results point out the need to further investigate the relations among morbidity, health care services use, health care expenditures and the varying types of health insurance plans.
Private health plans; Market failures; Asymmetric information
