Abstract
Over this last decade, the South African government has implemented major health service reforms to move towards a universal system. With many questions surrounding the future of the healthcare system, it is important to understand the impact of health insurance on the demand for specialized health services. This paper investigates the impact of hospitalization and dental insurances on health care utilization.
Highlights
Health insurance aims to improve health care utilization and protecting households against impoverishment fromoutof-pocket expenditures expenditures [1,2,3,4]
This paper focuses on two important components of health insurance in South Africa: The dental and the hospitalization insurances which are barely studied in the literature
Since the choice to be insured is endogenous, we used an instrumental variable method to capture the influence of insurance
Summary
Health insurance aims to improve health care utilization and protecting households against impoverishment fromoutof-pocket expenditures expenditures [1,2,3,4]. Little empirical evidence exists on the impact of health insurance on the demand for specialized health service like dental care and hospitalization in South Africa. Individuals are highly heterogeneous (age, health status, income, etc.), and the choice of whether to take an insurance is likely endogenous. In this case, the insured individuals may have characteristics that distinguish them from the uninsured individuals leading to a potential endogeneity issues [9,10]. This paper focuses on two important components of health insurance in South Africa: The dental and the hospitalization insurances which are barely studied in the literature. Dental insurance is designed to cover the expenses related to a visit to a dentist or dental treatment, while hospitalization insurance covers the charges for hospitalization services
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