Indiana University School of Medicine Researchers Provide New Study Findings on Public Health (How public health insurance expansion affects healthcare utilizations in middle and low-income households: an observational study from national …): Health and Medicine – Public Health

2023 APR 17 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A new study on public health is now available. According to news originating from Indiana University School of Medicine by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Public health insurance (PHI) has been implemented with different levels of participation in many countries, from voluntary to mandatory.”

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Indiana University School of Medicine: “In Vietnam, a law amendment made PHI compulsory nationwide in 2015 with a tolerance phase allowing people a flexible time to enroll. This study aims to examine mechanisms under which the amendment affected the enrollment, healthcare utilization, and out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures by middle- and low-income households in this transitioning process. Using the biennial Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys, the study applied the doubly robust difference-in-differences approach to compare outcomes in the post-amendment period from the 2016 survey with those in the pre-amendment period from the 2014 survey. The approach inheriting advantages from its predecessors, i.e., the difference-in-differences and the augmented inverse-probability weighting methods, can mitigate possible biases in policy evaluations due to the changes within the group and between groups over time in the cross-section observational study. The results showed health insurance expansion with extensive subsidies in premiums and medical coverage for persons other than the full-time employed, young children or elderly members in the family, significantly increased enrollments in the middle- and low-income groups by 9% and 8%, respectively. The number of visits for PHI-eligible services also increased, approximately 0.5 more visit per person in the middle-income and 1 more visit per person in the low-income.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “The amendment, however, so far did not show any significant effect on reducing OOP payments, neither for the low nor the middle-income groups. To further expand PHI coverage and financial protections, policymakers should focus on improving public health facilities, contracting PHI to more accredited private health providers, and motivating the high-income group’s enrollments.”

For more information on this research see: How public health insurance expansion affects healthcare utilizations in middle and low-income households: an observational study from national cross-section surveys in Vietnam. BMC Public Health, 2023,23(1):1-15. (BMC Public Health - http://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com). The publisher for BMC Public Health is BMC.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-15500-6.

Our news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Chi M. Nguyen, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis. Additional authors for this research include Mai P. Nguyen, Lan D. P. Luc.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)