title: Competitive markets for individual health insurance.
abstract: A more dynamic individual insurance market could match benefits with individual preferences, provide more portable and permanent coverage, and stimulate consumer-focused service. Necessary reforms, such as tax parity and targeted assistance to high-risk pools, would enable individual coverage to expand efficiently. In contrast, requirements for guaranteed issue and community rating drive low-risk persons out of voluntary individual markets and raise overall premiums. Guaranteed renewability and switching costs would stabilize individual-market risk pools. As the individual market becomes more representative of the overall population, insurers' perceived needs to underwrite and market selectively will lessen, making administrative loading factors less significant.
authors.affiliation: Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, USA.
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Harrington
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Miller
mesh_terms: D004465:Economic Competition; D020408:Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act; D015271:Insurance Pools; D007348:Insurance, Health / Q000145:classification / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D011050:Policy Making; D017149:Private Sector; D019464:Tax Exemption / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D014481:United States