COSTLY AGEING OR COSTLY DEATHS? UNDERSTANDING HEALTH CARE EXPENDITURE USING AUSTRALIAN MEDICARE PAYMENTS DATA*

David Johnson and Jongsay Yong

Australian Economic Papers, 2006, vol. 45, issue 1, 57-74

Abstract: In health economics and health care planning, the observation that age cohorts are generally positively correlated with per capita health expenditures is often cited as evidence that population ageing is the main driver of health care costs. Several recent studies, however, challenge this view. Zweifel et al. (1999) and Felder et al. (2000), for example, find that individuals incur the highest health care costs around the time before their death. Thus, they argue, it is proximity to death rather than ageing that is driving health care costs. This paper examines the issue by estimating a two‐equation exact aggregation demand model using Australian Medicare payments data over an eight‐year period (1994–2001). The results suggest that once proximity to death is accounted for, population ageing has either a negligible or even negative effect on health care demand.

Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8454.2006.00277.x

Related works:
Working Paper: Costly Ageing or Costly Deaths? Understanding Health Care Expenditure Using Australian Medicare Payments Data (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ausecp:v:45:y:2006:i:1:p:57-74

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0004-900X

Access Statistics for this article

Australian Economic Papers is currently edited by Daniel Leonard

More articles in Australian Economic Papers from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().