Determining the characteristics and levels of supplementary health insurance and estimating consumers' willingness to pay

Hozarmoghadam, N.; Ghanbarzadeh, M.; Bazyar, M.; Abbasi, M.

doi:10.22056/ijir.2024.03.01

Document Type : Original Research Paper

Authors

¹ Department of Insurance Research, Insurance Research Center, Tehran, Iran

² Department of Health Economics and Management, Faculty of Health, Ilam University of Medical Sciences, Ilam, Iran

³ Department of Management Sciences and Health Economics, Faculty of Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22056/ijir.2024.03.01

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Despite the great importance of supplementary health insurance, one of the obstacles to its expansion is that the willingness to pay for it is not known. The disregard for insurance calculations in the law and the supportive views of policy makers in this area have meant that premiums have been set by the insurer and for this reason may not match the costs incurred. With this in mind, the main objective of this article is to identify the factors that influence consumers' willingness to pay for supplementary health insurance and to estimate their willingness to pay.
METHODS: To achieve these objectives, the library study, expert panel, and discrete choice experiment methods were used along with the common analysis technique.
FINDINGS: Based on the results of the qualitative part, eight features were extracted for the health insurance package at four levels. The results of the quantitative part also showed that people in Tehran derive the most benefit from insurance coverage for inpatient services. This benefit is greater for inpatient services in the private sector than in the public sector. In addition, coverage of outpatient services carries more weight in people's preferences than other characteristics. Also, the desirability and willingness to pay for coverage of dental services was significant and for coverage of long-term care, paraclinical services and rehabilitation was rated as moderate. Medical devices have the least benefit to people and the presence of this feature in the supplementary health insurance package has the least impact on people's willingness to pay. The insurance premium also has a negative influence on the choice of supplementary insurance. The results also show that the demographic (topical) and socioeconomic characteristics of the insured can influence people's preferences.
CONCLUSION: People are most willing to pay for "dental services", "home care" and "numerous medical centers under contract", which should be considered by insurers when drafting policies.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Risk assessment in insurance

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Iranian Journal of Insurance Research

Determining the characteristics and levels of supplementary health insurance and estimating consumers' willingness to pay

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Volume 13, Issue 3 - Serial Number 49
April 2024
Pages 189-206

Determining the characteristics and levels of supplementary health insurance and estimating consumers' willingness to pay

References

References

Letters to Editor

Send comment about this article

Volume 13, Issue 3 - Serial Number 49April 2024Pages 189-206

Volume 13, Issue 3 - Serial Number 49
April 2024
Pages 189-206