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

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 esti...

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Autores principales:	Hyunwoo Jung, Junhyup Lee
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/67db256bfa264452aae795d2c2b7f371
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:67db256bfa264452aae795d2c2b7f3712021-12-02T20:14:58ZEstimating the effectiveness of national health insurance in covering catastrophic health expenditure: Evidence from South Korea.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0255677https://doaj.org/article/67db256bfa264452aae795d2c2b7f3712021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255677https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203The 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 reduced the CHE's incidence for 15.17% of the population in 2017. Second, the results of the concentration index of CHE showed that the intensity approach of CHE is better than the incidence approach. Third, the new approach we applied revealed that health insurance reduces the burden of CHE to some degree, although it was not an efficient way to reduce CHE. In conclusion, this study provides new policy approaches to save the finances of national health insurance and reduce the intensity of CHE at the same time by raising the low-cost burden of medical services and lowering that of high cost. Moreover, we suggest that policymakers should focus on income level of the households rather than specific diseases.Hyunwoo JungJunhyup LeePublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 8, p e0255677 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Hyunwoo Jung Junhyup Lee Estimating the effectiveness of national health insurance in covering catastrophic health expenditure: Evidence from South Korea.
description	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 reduced the CHE's incidence for 15.17% of the population in 2017. Second, the results of the concentration index of CHE showed that the intensity approach of CHE is better than the incidence approach. Third, the new approach we applied revealed that health insurance reduces the burden of CHE to some degree, although it was not an efficient way to reduce CHE. In conclusion, this study provides new policy approaches to save the finances of national health insurance and reduce the intensity of CHE at the same time by raising the low-cost burden of medical services and lowering that of high cost. Moreover, we suggest that policymakers should focus on income level of the households rather than specific diseases.
format	article
author	Hyunwoo Jung Junhyup Lee
author_facet	Hyunwoo Jung Junhyup Lee
author_sort	Hyunwoo Jung
title	Estimating the effectiveness of national health insurance in covering catastrophic health expenditure: Evidence from South Korea.
title_short	Estimating the effectiveness of national health insurance in covering catastrophic health expenditure: Evidence from South Korea.
title_full	Estimating the effectiveness of national health insurance in covering catastrophic health expenditure: Evidence from South Korea.
title_fullStr	Estimating the effectiveness of national health insurance in covering catastrophic health expenditure: Evidence from South Korea.
title_full_unstemmed	Estimating the effectiveness of national health insurance in covering catastrophic health expenditure: Evidence from South Korea.
title_sort	estimating the effectiveness of national health insurance in covering catastrophic health expenditure: evidence from south korea.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/67db256bfa264452aae795d2c2b7f371
work_keys_str_mv	AT hyunwoojung estimatingtheeffectivenessofnationalhealthinsuranceincoveringcatastrophichealthexpenditureevidencefromsouthkorea AT junhyuplee estimatingtheeffectivenessofnationalhealthinsuranceincoveringcatastrophichealthexpenditureevidencefromsouthkorea
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Estimating the effectiveness of national health insurance in covering catastrophic health expenditure: Evidence from South Korea.

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