What Affects People’s Attitude toward Mixed Medical Care Services?

—An Empirical Analysis Using a Questionnaire Survey—

Abstract

This study explores the determinants of people’s attitudes toward mixed medical care services, using a questionnaire data collected in December 2005. The same data had been previously used in Suzuki and Saito (2006).
Among possible determinants, I focus on the “capacity to pay” and the “health status” of the respondents . In the first place, while people with a higher capacity to pay can afford uncovered medical care services, they will still be able to receive public insurance benefits if the ban is lifted, and I have expected them to support the lifting of the ban. Secondly, people with poor health or higher health risks presumably have higher needs for uninsured medical care services, and they are expected to support the lifting of the ban. I have tested my conjectures by estimating an ordered probit model.
The results of my estimation have not completely confirmed my conjectures. With respect to the capacity to pay, people in the middle income and upper-middle income classes tended to support the lifting of the ban; however, with respect to health status, people with poor health status or higher health risks tended to oppose the lifting. In addition, people who were more knowledgeable about the health-insurance system tended to support the lifting. Furthermore, medical care or social welfare personnel tended to oppose the lifting of the ban.
Based on these results, we put forth the following interpretations: (1) people in the middle income class who have a higher capacity to pay have stronger preference for lifting the ban than those in the upper income class; (2) people with poor health status probably oppose the lifting of the ban because they believe that it would lead to a decrease in the level of public insurance benefits; and (3) the differences in demand and supply might reflect people’s attitudes toward mixed medical care services.