Sophie Guthmuller

Improving Takeup of Health Insurance Program: A Social Experiment in France

This paper is based on a randomized experiment conducted in order to understand the low takeup rate of a complementary health-insurance voucher program for the poorest in France. We explore two of the main hypotheses put forward to explain low enrollment: difficulties in accessing information about the program and a voucher amount considered to be too low. Results show that a voucher increase has a small but significant effect on takeup and the invitation to an information meeting discourages it. This study confirms the difficulties that are faced in increasing the healthinsurance coverage of poor populations via subsidy programs.

The Impact of the Eligibility Threshold of a French Means-Tested Health Insurance Programme on Doctor Visits: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis: The Eligibility Impact of a Means-Tested Health Insurance Plan

Abstract This paper assesses the impact of eligibility for a free means‐tested complementary health insurance plan, called Couverture Maladie Universelle Complémentaire (CMUC), on doctor visits. We use information on the selection rule to qualify for the plan to identify the effect of eligibility and adopt a regression discontinuity approach. Our sample consists of low‐income individuals enrolled in the Health Insurance Fund and recipients of social benefits from the Family Allowance Fund of an urban area in Northern France. Our findings do not show significant impacts of the CMUC threshold on the number of doctor visits within the full sample. Among the subsample of adults under 30 years old, however, eligible individuals are more likely to see a specialist and have, on average, significantly more specialist visits than non‐eligible individuals. This specific impact of the CMUC cut‐off point among young adults may be explained by the fact that young adults are less likely to be covered by a complementary health insurance plan when they are not recipients of the CMUC plan.