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KMID : 1170320200260020127
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Korean Journal of Health Economics and Policy
2020 Volume.26 No. 2 p.127 ~ p.147
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Effect of Private Health Insurance on Health Care Usage: Panel Poisson Regression Model Analysis
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Lee Gwang-Hoon
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Abstract
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Based on the estimation of the panel Poisson regression model using the Korean Welfare Panel for the period of 2007-2017, this paper analyzed the effect of initial and additional subscriptions of private medical insurance on the number of health checkups, outpatient care, and hospitalizations as well as the days of hospitalization. By including the fixed and the time effects in the panel estimation model as well as by using the lagged explanatory variable, we tried to control the endogeneity problem between the private health insurance subscription and the medical service usage. Estimation results show that initial subscription to private medical insurance significantly increases the usage of all the medical services considered but the additional subscription have a significant positive effect only on the number of outpatient care. In addition, the results also show that the initial subscription of private medical insurance increases the days of hospitalization through the increase in the number of hospitalizations. These results imply that private medical insurance subscriptions result in the increase in medical service usage, which, in turn, results in the increased share of very limited personnel and resources required to provide medical services. On the other hand, additional subscription of private medical insurance coverage seems to have a limited such effect compared to initial subscription. Such an inefficient increase in the use of medical service requires careful policy attention as it results in distortions of resource allocation in the medical care market, and in the adverse effects of increasing the financial burden of national health insurance.
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KEYWORD
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Private Health Insurance, Health Care Usage, Endogeneity, Panel Poisson Regression
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