Quality Health Care and Willingness to Pay for Health Insurance Retention: A Randomized Experiment in Kolkata Slums
在印度贫民窟的实地实验中，随机为保险持有人提供免费预防性体检，发现此举使续保支付意愿提高53%，并增加他们患病时咨询合格医生的概率，且效果集中在较贫困家庭。
The low quality of health care in developing countries reduces the poor's incentives to use quality health services and their demand for health insurance. Using data from a field experiment in India, I show that randomly offering insurance policyholders a free preventive checkup with a qualified doctor has a twofold effect: receiving this additional benefit raises willingness to pay to renew health insurance by 53%, doubling the likelihood of hypothetical renewal; exposed individuals are 10 percentage points more likely to consult a qualified practitioner when ill after the checkup. Both effects are concentrated on poorer households. There is no effect on health knowledge and healthcare spending. This suggests that exposing insured households to quality preventive care can be a cost-effective way of raising the demand for quality health care and retaining policyholders in the insurance scheme. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.