• Sessions
• Presentations
• Posters
• Rooms

Presentation

Session: Posters
Room: TBA
Time: Fri 13:00-14:30

Presenter: Dirk Sauerland (Witten/Herdecke University. Economics)

Abstract

Background:
The development of contribution rates to social health insurance (SHI) is of great importance for both, the public health policy and for the overall economic development in Germany. The height of contribution rates affects the ancillary labour costs, which then affect the competitive ability of the German economy. The new government intends to freeze the employer contributions, so that ancillary labour costs do not continue to rise. Potential expenditure increases are to be carried in the future considerably by the insured in form of an income-independent flat rate per person. In light of this, it is a goal of this contribution (i) to examine, which financial burdens for the insured ones, i.e. the height of flat rate per person, in the future are to be expected. In a further step (ii) other options for a sustainable financing of health care expenditures are examined.

Methods/model:
The long-term expenditure volume of the SHI is analyzed by OLS and vector autoregression (VAR) - models on the basis of macro-economic data supplied by the federal statistical office. This procedure is common to international comparative studies (e.g. Gerdtham/Löthgren, 2000) and was already used for the analysis of the SHI-expenditures in Germany (Sauerland, 2003). As dependent variable we use the log real per capita expenditure. As explaining variables we use – among others – the logs of the income per capita and the age structure as well as a proxy for technological progress. On basis of the regression results the SHI-expenditures are projected until the year 2050 and used to compute the height of flat rates per person.

Results:
The SHI-expenditures are driven in particular by medical-technical progress and income. On basis of the projected expenditures flat rates per person are expected to rise from approximately 100 euros in 2010 to values between 320 and 430 euros in 2050.

Conclusion:
The financial burden of the SHI-insured will similarly increase in case of flat rates per person as in case of the financing over income-related contribution-rates. Other options for a sustainable financing of SHI-expenditures have to be investigated. One example could be an instrument mix in which the introduction of Medical Savings accounts could strengthen the equivalence principle within the statutory insurance system.

Key Terms

Health Expenditures, Health Care Financing, Social Insurance

Authors:

Dirk Sauerland (Witten/Herdecke University. Economics) and Ansgar Wübker (Witten/Herdecke University. Economics)

Search with Google