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A microeconometric analysis of Canadian health care utilization
Author(s) -
Sarma Sisira,
Simpson Wayne
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.1057
Subject(s) - microdata (statistics) , overdispersion , health care , econometrics , latent class model , actuarial science , computer science , economics , statistics , count data , medicine , environmental health , mathematics , population , poisson distribution , census , economic growth
Understanding health care utilization is important to design efficient and effective health systems. Toward this end, we develop a relatively simple and intutively appealing microeconometric framework to analyse health care utilization and illustrate its use with recent Canadian microdata. We find that health care utilization consists of distinct stochastic processes requiring the use of two stochastic regression models. In particular, the latent class modelling framework is the superior statistical framework if the data permit modelling unobserved heterogeneity and overdispersion. In many instances, results differ for the classes of high and low users of health care services. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.