Health Insurance Utilization and Its Impact: Observations from the Middle-Aged and Elderly in China

Yu Wang, Yan Jiang, Yang Li, Xiaojun Wang, Chi Ma and Shuangge Ma

PLOS ONE, 2013, vol. 8, issue 12, 1-9

Abstract: Objective: In China, despite a high coverage rate, health insurance is not used for all illness episodes. Our goal is to identify subjects’ characteristics associated with insurance utilization and the association between utilization and medical expenditure. Methods: A survey was conducted in January and February of 2012. 2093 middle-aged and elderly subjects (45 years old and above) were surveyed. Results: Heath insurance was not utilized for 12.6% (inpatient), 53.3% (outpatient), and 72.6% (self-treatment) of disease episodes. Subjects’ characteristics were associated with insurance utilization. Inpatient and outpatient treatments were expensive. In the multivariate analysis of outpatient treatment expenditure, insurance utilization was significantly associated with higher treatment cost, lost income, and gross total cost. Conclusion: Utilization of health insurance may need to be improved. Insurance utilization can reduce out-of-pocket medical expenditure. However, the amount paid by the insured is still high. Policy intervention is needed to further improve the effectiveness of health insurance.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0080978 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 80978&type=printable (application/pdf)

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:plo:pone00:0080978

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080978

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().