Introduction to the Special Issue on Long-Term Care Insurance and Health Insurance

The articles published in this special issue cover several dimensions of two insurance markets that are characterized by major imperfections such as high transaction costs, information asymmetries, and low competition. Furthermore, insurance premiums are high and coverage is limited. On the international scale, the supply of both private long-term care insurance and health insurance is limited, whereas populations are aging. According to Jeffrey Brown and Amy Finkelstein, there are important demand- and supply-side limits to the size of the U.S. private long-term care insurance market, and it is not clear how public policies could improve the situation in the short run. They document that only 4 percent of long-term care expenditures are reimbursed by private insurance policies.