Attitude toward health insurance in developing countries from a decision-making perspective.

Abstract

This article provides an analysis of the demand side of health insurance from a decision-making perspective. I will address in particular why take-up of affordable health insurance products in developing countries may be low despite their obvious benefits for the insurant. Without any doubt, (negative) attitudes toward the idea of health insurance are influenced by multiple factors and have their roots in financial, cultural, traditional, religious, cognitive, experiential, and other reasons. However, in this discussion article, I maintain that, in addition to these reasons, there are psychological causes explaining low insurance take-up that have so far been insufficiently considered in the literature and that have their roots in unfavorable decision-making patterns. Low take-up of health insurance can be partly explained by both a strong present bias when making decisions about the future, leading to difficulties to act in accordance with one's long-term interests, and the unreadiness to be part of a caring society of insurees when no direct benefit for the contributor or his close kin is immediately evident. Effective policies aimed at increasing the demand for insurance need to exploit and modify people's present-bias, and modulate and expand (perceived) group boundaries to foster cooperative attitudes to all members of the caring society, even if they are strangers.

Insights from behavioral economics for policymakers of choice‐based health insurance markets: A scoping review

“…For that, we perform a scoping review of extant literature at the intersection of behavioral economics and health insurance. Although several literature reviews have been published that provide an overview of the field (see Baicker et al, 2012; Kalenscher, 2014; Kunreuther et al, 2013; Richter et al, 2019; Schneider, 2004), they have not used a systematic approach to identify and summarize the findings. As a result, we are left with only a partial picture of the wealth of literature that has been accumulated on this topic.…”

Arbitration between insula and temporoparietal junction subserves framing-induced boosts in generosity during social discounting

“…The acceptance and support of the principle of a caring society, and the attitude towards the welfare of socially remote strangers, is central for a civilization to function well. It seems vital for societies to successfully meet current challenges, such as integrating refugees, addressing economic inequality, acceding the trials and promises of a globalized world, or managing the public health implications of the current COVID-19 pandemic (Kalenscher, 2014). Here, we present a simple behavioral framing manipulation that boosts generosity towards socially remote others: framing a selfish choice as a loss to others can result in a negative affective state, eventually motivating prosocial behavior, even if the framing of the choice options is irrelevant for the actual payoff to others.…”

“…Collaboration offers benefits to their members that they would not be able to achieve individually. However, societies can only function efficiently if their members are willing to contribute to causes whose beneficiaries are abstract and anonymous, such as public goods, and/or to causes whose beneficiaries are socially remote, as it is often the case with wealth redistribution for social welfare, public health insurance, or state pension systems (see also Kalenscher, 2014). Most people are indeed willing to sacrifice own resources for the welfare of others (Nowak, 2006;Rilling & Sanfey, 2011), but their generosity typically declines steeply with social distance between them and the recipients of help, a phenomenon called social discounting (Jones & Rachlin, 2006;Strombach et al, 2015).…”

An Exploratory Study on Corporate Governance From Neuro-Governance Lenses in the Malaysian Context

“…For instance, A Berhad’s top management plans to undertake an investment between two options; option one has a probability of 0.85, and option 2 has a probability of 0.7. The expected utility theory suggests that top management would undertake option 1 with the higher expected value ( Kalenscher, 2014 ).…”