TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Atal, Juan Pablo
AU  - Fang, Hanming
AU  - Karlsson, Martin
AU  - Ziebarth, Nicolas R.
        TI  - Exit, Voice or Loyalty? An Investigation into Mandated Portability of Front-Loaded Private Health Plans
        PY  - 2017/Jun/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 10871
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp10871
        AB  - We study theoretically and empirically how consumers in an individual private longterm health insurance market with front-loaded contracts respond to newly mandated portability requirements of their old-age provisions. To foster competition, effective 2009, the German legislature made the portability of standardized old-age provisions mandatory. Our theoretical model predicts that the portability reform will increase internal plan switching. However, under plausible assumptions, it will not increase external insurer switching. Moreover, the portability reform will enable unhealthier enrollees to reoptimize their plans. We find confirmatory evidence for the theoretical predictions using claims panel data from a big private insurer. 
        KW  - consumer bargaining
KW  - health policy reform
KW  - individual private health insurance
KW  - old-age provisions
KW  - portability
KW  - health plan switching
KW  - switching costs
KW  - retention
        ER  -