Introduction: The European Union, the Insurance Industry and the Public-Private Mix in Healthcare

Research has paid little attention to date on how the European Union (EU) affects private (usually voluntary) health insurance at domestic level and more broadly, the political economy of the public-private mix in healthcare. Our argument in this Introduction is that EU law and regulation is, essentially, likely to do so through the provisions applicable to the insurance sector as a whole. We then explain why it could potentially be a vehicle for transformative changes of private health insurers, and why, by extension, it could interact with the prior effects of domestic policy choices in healthcare. Ultimately, such interactions could also help change the nature and scope of health coverage. On the basis of these statements, we develop an analytical approach to elucidate, characterize and prove this influence. We then outline the research design and case selection processes and discuss the various methods applied in the nine contributions to this book. After a short summary of their respective findings, we reflect in a concluding section on how they echo wider debates in the literature on the role of private actors in contemporary Welfare States and on EU influence in healthcare.