台灣醫療資源使用之公平性探討

This study employs data from Taiwan's 1991 National Health Care Expenditure Survey to test the null hypothesis of no horizontal inequity in delivery of health care. The tests are based on hurdle models and zero-altered models that include several socioeconomic variables, such as family income, education and marital status. The empirical results rejects the hypothesis of no inequity because socioeconomic variables exhibit significant effect on the utilization of outpatient visits. An 1 % increase in family income raises the number of outpatient visits for 0.5%. The higher the education one received, the more he/she uses the outpatient services. On the average, single individuals seek 1.66 less visits than married individuals, while the divorced/bereaved persons have 1.20 more visits than the married people.