PNS117 A STUDY ON THE FACTORS AFFECTING CHINESE CITIZENS' WILLINGNESS TO PURCHASE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE

Abstract

As a special type of private health insurance in China, tax-deductible private health insurance is promoted by the Chinese government in November of 2015 to stimulate the development of private health insurance. A pre-tax discount up to 2,400 yuan is provided to insurers regardless of health status and guarantees renewal, and requires no . Though with various favorable claims standards, tax-deductible private health insurance only accumulated a premium of 940 million yuan, accounting for only 0.172% of the total premium income in private(544.813 billion yuan) in 2018, indicating an unsatisfactory performance. This paper aims to explore the factors influencing Chinese residents’ willingness to purchase tax-deductible private health insurance. A survey was conducted from November 2018 to April 2019 in Hangzhou city in Zhejiang province of China to collect data on citizens’ willingness to purchase tax-deductible private health insurance, and its potential influencing factors. A binary logit model was used to estimate the impact of each influencing factor explained by the odds ratio. A total of 1613 citizens participated in the survey. Middle-income citizens have the strongest willingness. Higher education level, higher family support pressure, participation in urban employee medical basic insurance or urban resident basic medical insurance, preference to high outpatient reimbursement level and low hospital reimbursement level, knowledge of private health insurance and previous experience of purchasing tax-deductible private health insurance are positively correlated with purchasing willingness. Corresponding measures, such as improving the tax incentive, unifying the private and social insurance, strengthening publicity of tax-deductible private health insurance, can be taken to stimulate the development of private health insurance.