Expanding Health Insurance for the Elderly of the Philippines

Michael Abrigo, Timothy Halliday and Teresa Molina

No 201907, Working Papers from University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics

Abstract: The Philippines expanded health insurance coverage of its senior citizens, aged 60 and older, in 2014. Employing data from two separate sources, we find that the expansion increased insurance coverage by approximately 16 percentage points. Instrumental variables estimates indicate that out-of-pocket medical expenditures more than doubled among the newly insured. We argue that this is most likely driven by an outward shift in the medical demand curve due to physician-induced demand. Quantile regression estimates indicate that these effects were the most pronounced among high utilizers. We show that the compliers, defined as those induced by the policy to obtain insurance, are disproportionately female and largely from the middle of the socioeconomic distribution. Finally, tests for selection indicate only moderate adverse selection into the treatment.

Keywords: Immigration; Health Insurance; Cost Sharing; Medicaid; Insurance Exchange (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I13 I14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-hea, nep-ias and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://www.economics.hawaii.edu/research/workingpapers/WP_19-07.pdf First version, 2019 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Expanding health insurance for the elderly of the Philippines (2022)
Working Paper: Expanding Health Insurance for the Elderly of the Philippines (2019)
Working Paper: Expanding Health Insurance for the Elderly of the Philippines (2019)
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