2005 Volume 16 Pages 5-21
In recent years, reform of National Health Insurance System is one of the political issues in Japan. The key of this issue is how intergenerational equity is attained, adjusting the drastic transition in population structure. In order to argue this theme, it is necessary to have the information about “Lifetime Medical Expenditure”(henceforth, LME),
In this article, I had estimated LME by three methods, using medical claim data, which were of 2 groups of insurance system. One is the estimation using stationary population (Method 1), the second is that using survival rate and consultation rate (Method 2), the third is that adjusting “Pre-Death Medical Expenditure”(Method 3).
As a result, I obtained that LME was 14-15.8 millions yen by Method 1, and 16.9-18.7 millions yen by Method 2. The result that estimated by Method 3 revealed that Pre-Death Medical Expenditure much affected the estimation of LME. The result of Method 3 was that they needed 13.9 millions yen as LME, and it was the most real of 3 methods.
