National Health Insurance Reform in Indonesia: Health Care Usage and Expenditure Patterns When Expanding Population Coverage

Lisa Rogge

Review of Development Economics, 2026, vol. 30, issue 4, 2601-2663

Abstract: In 2014, Indonesia took a large step toward Universal Health Coverage and protection from the economic risk of illness—previous health insurance schemes were joined aiming to cover the entire population. This reform made it the largest single‐payer public health insurance scheme worldwide, which covered approximately 77% of Indonesian households in 2020. I study how this reform changed individual health care usage and health expenditure, focusing on changes beyond the previous fragmented public insurance schemes. I apply two versions of difference‐in‐difference estimation to 10 rounds of the Indonesian socio‐economic survey (SUSENAS, 2011–2020). Like in previous studies with shorter datasets, I find significant increases in inpatient care usage associated with coverage expansion, particularly in public hospitals. In addition, I show that these increases tend to be stronger among households that were already insured before the reform. I do not detect strong changes in outpatient care usage or health expenditure. These findings suggest a reduction in the economic risk of illness associated with the health insurance reform but highlight in the equity dimension the need to make these benefits accessible for the large, newly eligible population.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/rode.70108

Related works:
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:rdevec:v:30:y:2026:i:4:p:2601-2663

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1363-6669

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Development Economics is currently edited by E. Kwan Choi

More articles in Review of Development Economics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().