2021 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
How does health insurance copayment affect the use of medical services and health outcomes
Project/Area Number |
19K13700
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Research Institution | International University of Japan |
Principal Investigator |
Wong ChunYee 国際大学, 国際関係学研究科, 講師(移行) (20814164)
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Project Period (FY) |
2019-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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Keywords | health outcome / healthcare / health insurance / health behavior |
Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
This project is aimed at investigating the effects of health insurance and related health policies on healthcare usage and health outcomes. The data of seven waves of Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions (CSLC) were obtained to facilitate analyzing the health policy impacts on healthcare utilization and health outcomes of individuals. The heterogeneous effects of the policies on individuals' health outcomes conditional on the basic individual characteristics were examined. In the analysis, the regression discontinuity design is deployed to estimate the local average treatment effects of the coinsurance on health outcomes. Since there is a significant decrease in the coinsurance when an individual reaches age seventy and above that is an exogenous threshold, the coinsurance policy supports the use of this methodology. The analysis results indicate that in general, the decline in coinsurance after age seventy significantly decreases the healthcare out-of-pocket cost per capita. However, it is found that the number of symptoms being diagnosed increases after the coinsurance decreases. Also, the probability of being hospitalized had increased, though this effect becomes statistically insignificant after the policy change in 2006. Since the data from CSLC do not contain detailed demographic and health behavior information of the individual, another online survey is now in progress which will fill the gap of the data that are not available in the CSLC.
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Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
The systematic literature review was conducted and major studies from the health related journals were identified. The data of seven waves of Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions were obtained and the data consolidation was completed. An online survey is being conducted in order to acquire more detailed information about individuals' health literacy, health insurance status, healthcare usage, health outcomes and other demographic characteristics. The trial run of the survey has been done in early May and the formal survey is in progress now.
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Strategy for Future Research Activity |
The data obtained from the online survey is expected to be available by the end of May, 2022. This dataset, together with the data from CSLC, will be used to analysis the heterogeneous effects of health insurance on health outcome and health behavior, conditional on the individuals' socio-demographic characteristics. It is expected that the data analysis will be completed in the next few months. The the draft of the research paper will be prepared in due course.
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Causes of Carryover |
An online survey is being conducted and is expected to be completed by the end of May, 2022. Also, research assistants are required for analyzing data, and assisting with the preparation of manuscripts.
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