Insurance health impacts on health and non-medical consumption in a developing country

"The authors examine the effects of the introduction of Vietnam's health insurance (VHI) program on health outcomes, health care utilization, and non-medical household consumption. The use of panel data collected before and after the insurance program's introduction allows them to eli...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wagstaff, Adam
Corporate Author: World Bank
Other Authors: Pradhan, Menno
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: [Washington, D.C] World Bank 2005
Series:Policy research working paper
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: World Bank E-Library Archive - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
LEADER 02994nmm a2200265 u 4500
001 EB002097165
003 EBX01000000000000001237255
005 00000000000000.0
007 cr|||||||||||||||||||||
008 221013 ||| eng
100 1 |a Wagstaff, Adam 
245 0 0 |a Insurance health impacts on health and non-medical consumption in a developing country  |h Elektronische Ressource  |c Adam Wagstaff, Menno Pradhan 
260 |a [Washington, D.C]  |b World Bank  |c 2005 
653 |a Health status indicators / Vietnam 
653 |a Consumption (Economics) / Vietnam 
653 |a Health insurance / Vietnam 
700 1 |a Pradhan, Menno 
710 2 |a World Bank 
041 0 7 |a eng  |2 ISO 639-2 
989 |b WOBA  |a World Bank E-Library Archive 
490 0 |a Policy research working paper 
500 |a Includes bibliographical references. - Title from PDF file as viewed on 4/25/2005 
856 4 0 |u http://elibrary.worldbank.org/content/workingpaper/10.1596/1813-9450-3563  |x Verlag  |3 Volltext 
082 0 |a 330 
520 |a "The authors examine the effects of the introduction of Vietnam's health insurance (VHI) program on health outcomes, health care utilization, and non-medical household consumption. The use of panel data collected before and after the insurance program's introduction allows them to eliminate any confounding effects due to selection on time-invariant un-observables, and their coupling of propensity score matching with a double-difference estimator allows them to reduce the risk of biases due to inappropriate specification of the outcome regression model. The authors' results suggest that Vietnam's health insurance program impacted favorably on height-for-age and weight-for-age of young school children, and on body mass index among adults. Their results suggest that among young children, VHI increases use of primary care facilities and leads to a substitution away from the use of pharmacists as a source of advice and non-prescribed medicines toward the use of them as a supplier of medicines prescribed by a health professional. Among older children and adults, VHI results in a marked increase in the use of hospital inpatient and outpatient departments. The results also suggest that VHI causes a reduction in annual out-of-pocket expenditures on health and an increase in non-medical household consumption, including food consumption, but mostly nonfood consumption. The authors' estimate of the VHI-induced reduction in out-of-pocket health spending is considerably smaller than their estimate of the VHI-induced increase in non-medical consumption, which is consistent with the idea that households hold back their consumption considerably if, through lack of health insurance, they are exposed to the risk of large out-of-pocket expenditures. This is especially plausible in a country where at the time (1993), a single visit to a public hospital cost on average the equivalent of 20 percent of a person's annual nonfood consumption. "--World Bank web site