Alcohol exclusion provisions, embedded in the Uniform Accident and Sickness Policy Provision Law (UPPL), allow health insurance providers to punish alcohol consumption by permitting them to deny claims for injuries stemming from alcohol impairment or the use of non-prescribed narcotics. Although the UPPLs were originally proposed to discourage excessive drinking and substance use, there is no clear evidence to either support or refute that these laws achieved their intended purpose. Furthermore, few studies document that these laws may have unintended consequences, as they create a disincentive for physicians to test the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels of injured patients due to concerns about potential insurance reimbursement denials. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the UPPLs by investigating their impact on alcohol consumption at the intensive and extensive margin, drunk driving behavior, alcohol-related traffic fatalities, alcohol-related crime, and health insurance coverage rates and premiums.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.