Chile - Health Insurance Issues : Old Age and Catastrophic Health Costs
The study offers an analytic approach to fundamental questions concerning the effect of the aging population on the Chilean health system, and, to the prospects for, and the extent of financing health care for the elderly, as presumably catastrophi...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
Washington, DC
2013
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2000/08/693212/chile-health-insurance-issues-old-age-catastrophic-health-costs http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14982 |
| Summary: | The study offers an analytic approach to
fundamental questions concerning the effect of the aging
population on the Chilean health system, and, to the
prospects for, and the extent of financing health care for
the elderly, as presumably catastrophic costs are linked to
this effect. However, the study reveals that catastrophic
care is not a problem primarily affecting the elderly, since
interventions show that, rather the highest costly episodes
occur among infants. It is specified that technological
change introduced the possibility of delivering care, at
very high cost, to infants who would otherwise die, or
suffer congenital disorders, and it is this change which
shaped the current age distribution of catastrophic care.
Under the country's health insurance system, the
largest group is covered by the public system, while a
smaller group is privately insured. However, the study
reveals that significant numbers of catastrophic infant
events are assisted in public facilities, regardless of
patient's affiliation. This implies that apparently the
public system does assume disproportionate catastrophic
burdens, where the elderly are neither the sole, nor most
substantial drain on public resources, suggesting private
insurance could attract the stable, elderly population, and
thus mitigate the financial conditions of the public health system. |
|---|