policy private insurance v NHS insurance markets

1. Would knowing your genetic risk for
dementia change the way you behave with
the NHS?

2. POLICY
Socio-economic cost of dementia
and financing of care
Alzheimer’s Europe
Glasgow 2014

3. • Background
• Aim
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion

4. Background
• what is an “insurance contract”?
• information asymmetry
• Arrow’s work (1963)
• George Akerlov and the Nobel Prize for
economics (2001)

5. • theory on insurance has implications for
healthcare
• there are concerns that healthcare in
England could be moving towards a
private insurance system
• huge explosion in work on the interaction
between genetics and lifestyle, with a view
to predicting who might develop dementia

6. Aims
• this online survey was undertaken with a
view to working out whether members of a
general public exhibited views with the
functioning of private insurance markets

8. Methods
• respondents were invited from my Twitter
@legalaware with 1200 followers
• used “SurveyMonkey”
• there were 125 respondents in total
• the sample is possibly biased because of
characteristics of the follower list

10. Exclusions
None

18. Limitations
• All respondents were in the UK.
• There might have been political bias in the
sample, though it is useful to note perhaps
that personal health budgets and a
comprehensive universal NHS, free at the
point of need, have currently cross-party
support

19. Discussion
• Clearly a much larger sample is going to
have to ascertain what these trends are.
• There is no doubt that the furore over care
data sharing and the policy to improve
diagnosis of dementia rates will have a
legacy on future dementia policy, and
possibly a very negative one.

20. • individuals assessing their risk for
dementia may not behave like traditional
insurance markets.
• reasons for this might include the facts
that adults in fact prioritise their own health
and do not wish knowingly to put it to risk,
they appreciate the rôle of factors in the
environment

21. Conclusion
• the negative publicity surrounding the Health
and Social Care Act (2012) as regards
privatisation may have played an important
rôle here.
• this is all very problematic if the ultimate goal
for increasing awareness of dementia was to
boost the private insurance industry and Big
Pharma
• it’s great news if you’re a supporter of

22. • Background
• Aim
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion