Unmet health care and health care utilization
研究了医疗保健利用对未满足医疗需求的因果影响,发现增加就诊次数可降低未满足需求概率,对女性和城市居民效果显著,建议扩大药品保险和延长医生服务时间。
The objective of this study is to examine the causal effect of health care utilization on unmet health care needs. An IV approach deals with the endogeneity between the use of health care services and unmet health care, using the presence of drug insurance and the number of physicians by health region as instruments. We employ three cycles of the Canadian Community Health Survey confidential master files (2003, 2005, and 2014). We find a robustly negative relationship between health care use and unmet health care needs. One more visit to a medical doctor on average decreases the probability of reporting unmet health care needs by 0.014 points. The effect is negative for the women-only group whereas it is statistically insignificant for men; similarly, the effect is negative for urban dwellers but insignificant for rural ones. Health care use reduces the likelihood of reporting unmet health care. Policies that encourage the use of health care services, like increasing the coverage of public drug insurance and increasing after hours accessibility of physicians, can help reduce the likelihood of unmet health care.