We evaluate the demand for long term care (LTC) insurance prospects in a stated preference context, by means of the results of a choice experiment carried out on a representative sample of the Emilia-Romagna population. Choice modelling techniques have not been used yet for studying the demand for LTC services. In this paper these methods are first of all used in order to assess the relative importance of the characteristics which define some hypothetical insurance programmes and to elicit the willingness to pay for some LTC coverage prospects. Moreover, thanks to the application of a nested logit specification with ‘partial degeneracy’, we are able to model the determinants of the preference for status quo situations where no systematic cover for LTC exists. On the basis of this empirical model, we test for the effects of a series of socio-demographic variables as well as personal and household health state

Hospital is gratefully acknowledged. Discrete-choice experiments, while becoming increasingly popular, have rarely been tested for validity and reliability. This contribution purports to provide some evidence of a rather unique type. Two surveys designed to measure willingness-to-accept (WTA) for reform options in Swiss health care and health insurance are used to provide independent information with regard to two elements of reform. The issue to be addressed is whether WTA values converge although the three overlapping attributes (a more restrictive drug benefit, a delayed access to medical innovation, and a change in the monthly insurance premium) are embedded in widely differing choice sets. Experiment A contains rather radical health system reform options, while experiment B concentrates on more familiar elements such as copayment and the benefit catalogue. While mean WTA values differ between experiments, they tend to vary