In Between the Market and Public Health Insurance: A Place for Occupational Welfare in Europe?

Abstract

There is a growing body of studies emphasising the multi-pillar configuration of protection against social risk in Europe, particularly in pension reform. In this chapter, we try to expand on this literature to find applicability beyond the sole case of pensions by looking at the case of occupational health insurance in France. In order to do so, we present a restatement of the pillar/provision perspective in order to apply it to a broader range of cases. We argue it is a powerful analytical tool provided it is complemented with a (non-exhaustive) list of perspectives widely used in studies on social policy and does not blunder into the pitfall of functionalism. The chapter focuses on crossing the pillar perspective with a finance and also a regime perspective. Following the seminal intuition of R. Titmuss, an important result yielded is that the overall structure of resources distribution of the whole welfare system can become highly anti-redistributive once occupational schemes and fiscal incentives are included in the analysis.