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Does non-profit health insurance reduce financial burden? Evidence from the Vietnam living standards survey panel

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Author Info
Ardeshir Sepehri (Department of Economics, University of Manitoba, Canada)
Sisira Sarma (Elisabeth Bruyere Research Institute, University of Ottawa, Canada)
Wayne Simpson (Department of Economics, University of Manitoba, Canada)

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Abstract

Many low-income countries are implementing non-profit medical insurance to increase access to health services, especially among low-income households, and to raise additional revenue for financing public health services. This paper estimates the effect of insurance on out-of-pocket health expenditures using the Vietnam Living Standards Surveys for 1993 and 1998 and appropriate models for panel data. Our findings suggest that health insurance reduces health expenditure when unobserved heterogeneity is accounted for. Failure to capture unobserved heterogeneity produces contrary results that are consistent with previous cross-sectional studies in the literature. Health insurance is found to reduce out-of-pocket expenditure between 16 and 18% and the reduction in expenditure is more pronounced for individuals with lower incomes. At mean income, the effect of health insurance is to reduce health expenditures between 28 and 35%. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/hec.1080
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Publisher Info
Article provided by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. in its journal Health Economics.

Volume (Year): 15 (2006)
Issue (Month): 6 ()
Pages: 603-616
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Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:15:y:2006:i:6:p:603-616

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Web page: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/5749

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Halvorsen, Robert & Palmquist, Raymond, 1980. "The Interpretation of Dummy Variables in Semilogarithmic Equations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 474-75, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Angel López-Nicolás, 1998. "Unobserved heterogeneity and censoring in the demand for health care," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 7(5), pages 429-437.
  3. Zabel, Jeffrey E., 1992. "Estimating fixed and random effects models with selectivity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 269-272, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Matthew Jowett & Anil Deolalikar & Peter Martinsson, 2004. "Health insurance and treatment seeking behaviour: evidence from a low-income country," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(9), pages 845-857. [Downloadable!]
  5. Winnie Yip & Karen Eggleston, 2001. "Provider payment reform in China: the case of hospital reimbursement in Hainan province," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(4), pages 325-339. [Downloadable!]
  6. Ai, Chunrong & Norton, Edward C., 2003. "Interaction terms in logit and probit models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 123-129, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Hien, Nguyen Tran & Thu Ha, Le Thi & Rifkin, Susan B. & Wright, E. Pamela, 1995. "The pursuit of equity: a health sector case study from Vietnam," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 191-204, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  1. Galarrága, O & Sosa-Rubí, S. G & Salinas, A & Sesma, S, 2008. "The Impact of Universal Health Insurance on Catastrophic and Out-of-Pocket Health Expenditures in Mexico: a Model with an Endogoenous Treatment Variable," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 08/12, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York. [Downloadable!]
  2. Wagstaff, Adam & Lindelow, Magnus & Gao Jun & Xu Ling & Qian Juncheng, 2007. "Extending health insurance to the rural population : an impact evaluation of China ' s new cooperative medical scheme," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4150, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
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