Constructing a Basefile for Simulating Kunming's Medical Insurance Scheme of Urban Employees
Focusing on China’s medical insurance scheme which covers all employers and employees in urban areas, this research aims to assess the distributional impacts of medical insurance policies and to predict medical expenses by using microsimulation techniques. As an important part of the project, this article provides a brief overview of China’s medical insurance reform of urban employees and detail the techniques and processes to construct a basefile in 2005 for projecting the medical expenditures for urban employees over the period of 2006-2010. The main data used are administrative medical records of medical insurance participants provided by the Bureau of Labour and Social Security of Kunming, Yunnan Province. Along with the initial analysis for the raw datasets and age processing and adjustment for the individual records, monthly income information was imputed and personal savings accounts were established for each individual record. Important modelling parameters such as death rates and income adjustment factors were constructed. Furthermore, this article identifies medical insurance for government officials by using the combination of logarithm curve fitting and binary discriminant analysis. Based on this basefile, a static microsimulation model can be built to assess the implementation effects of the medical insurance policy and analyse the impact of the medical insurance scheme on urban employees.
Case Studies - Health&WealthMOD: a microsimulation model of the economic impacts of diseases on older workers
The Australian Government is seeking to encourage older workers to remain in the labour force longer to overcome future labour shortages and ensure adequate taxation revenue to fund the needs of an ageing population. Longer labour force participation also has benefits to individuals in terms of available income and capacity to save for a better standard of living in retirement. While the Government recognises that not all older workers are able to participate in the labour force, there is little information on what health conditions keep people from working, or what the costs are to the government or the individual. This case study outlines how a new micro simulation model, Health&WealthMOD, is being designed to fill this information gap by estimating the economic impacts of illness. The general approach adopted is outlined, following which two early applications of the model are presented. The model is used to explore the determinants of the duration spent in retirement and to generate projections of retirement due to illness to 2020.
The Lifetime Distributional Impact of Government Health Outlays
This article examines the lifetime redistributive impact of government health outlays and finds that such outlays redistribute income from the lifetime rich to the lifetime poor and from men to women.