Estimating the effectiveness of national health insurance in covering catastrophic health expenditure: Evidence from South Korea.

ABSTRACT: The catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) indicator has been used to measure the medical cost burden of households. Many countries have institutionalized their health insurance systems to reduce out-of-pocket payments, the main contributor to the financial burden. However, there is no method to estimate how the insurance coverage reduces the CHE. This study proposes an approach to evaluate the effectiveness of insurance in reducing the CHE impacts in terms of incidence and gap, which are based on a modified calculation method of CHE. Additionally, we apply these methods to data from the Korea Health Panel Survey (2011-2016). The results are as follows. First, under the setting of a threshold of 10%, the CHE incidence rate was 19.26% when the Korean national health insurance benefits reduce

SUBMITTER: Jung H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8376031 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature