The Impacts of Persistent Behaviour and Cost Sharing Policy on Demand for Outpatient Visits by the Elderly: Evidence from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance.

[[abstract]]Establishing how to reform the cost-sharing policy to reduce waste in health-care utilisation is an important issue, especially in an ageing society. Using a generalised method of moments (GMM) for the dynamic panel count model during the period 1997–2007 from the National Health Insurance (NHI) programme in Taiwan, this study examines the effects of persistent behaviour and the cost-sharing policy on outpatient medical utilisation for Taiwan’s elderly. Empirically, we find positive and negative coefficient estimations for persistent behaviour and price elasticity, respectively, thereby creating a clear trade-off effect of the cost-sharing policy on health-care utilisation. Furthermore, our study finds that the short-run price elasticity (−0.2561) is always smaller than long-run elasticity (−0.4052). Finally, the empirical results indicate that the price elasticity for females and patients with high medical expenditure, low income, high chronic diseases and good health is higher than that for males and patients with low medical expenditure, high income, low chronic diseases and bad health.[[notice]]補正完