Who Benefits from the Fixed Copayment of Medical and Pharmaceutical Expenditure among the Korean Elderly?

Eunja Park and Sookja Choi
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Eunja Park: Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, Sejong 30147, Korea
Sookja Choi: Red Cross College of Nursing, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 06974, Korea

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 21, 1-11

Abstract: The Korean National Health Insurance system imposes a 30% coinsurance for outpatient medical care and prescription drugs; however, at the age of 65, the coinsurance model changes to a copayment model that offers lower fees for the elderly. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the influence of the copayment model for outpatient visits and prescription drugs on healthcare utilization among the Korean elderly. We compared total outpatient visits, total prescriptions, and out-of-pocket expenses between a case group with copayment reduction (65 years or older) and a control group without any reduction (64 years or younger). We obtained secondary data collected from seven waves of the Korea Health Panel Survey (2010–2016). Outpatient visits increased exclusively in the case group among those with lower income. After adjusting for covariates, the results of the difference-in-differences analysis showed that, compared to the control group, there was a significant increase in outpatient visits among individuals with lower income in the case group. Our study shows that cost sharing changes affect Korean patients with different income levels in different ways.

Keywords: fixed copayment; medical expenses; Korea; pharmaceutical expenditure; elderly (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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