The Effects of the Medical Insurance System on the Outpatients' Demand for Medical Care

Abstract

In this paper，we estimate the outpatient medical care demand functions and examine the effects of the reform of the medical insurance system in 1997. We focus on the questions of the people who have been most affected by the reform. Both the cross-tabulations and the estimation results show that the reform affected mainly dependants' demand for medical care. Heads of households were not greatly affected，although the reform raised their out-of-pocket ratio. This result implies that all members of the household shared the increase in the medical costs of the head of the household in order to sustain the head's visits to the doctor.