Winners and Losers of Universal Health Insurance: A Macroeconomic Analysis

Abstract

Abstract This paper studies the supply-side distortions and the consequences resulted from provider-side cost containing universal health insurance (UHI) scheme. A two-sector overlapping generations model of endogenous physicians’ specialty choice is presented. We find that the general public is possible to be benefited from the cost containing UHI if the quality of medical services does not deteriorate too much. However, physicians in the medical service sector suffer from such scheme and end up earning lower incomes, regardless of one’s specialty and talent. Inequality among physicians also increases.