Abstract : We analyze the impact of healthcare financing on economic growth, focusing on the issue of the joint public-private financing of healthcare (co-payment). We use an overlapping-generations model with endogenous growth based on health human capital accumulation, where families pay for childhood preventive care and the government can either fully finance or co-finance adulthood curative care. From a growth maximizing perspective, distortionary taxes give an advantage to co-financing. Nevertheless, we prove that, if agents are assumed to be heterogeneous in preferences, full financing can become the best option.
Maame Esi Woode, Carine Nourry, Bruno Ventelou. Childhood preventive care, adult healthcare and economic growth: The role of healthcare financing. Economics Letters, Elsevier, 2014, 124 (1), pp.41--47. ⟨hal-01463103⟩