Udomsak Seenprachawong, advisorPapar Kananurak2014-05-052014-05-052013http://repository.nida.ac.th/handle/662723737/736Thesis ( )--National Institute of Development Administration.The enhancement of healthcare programs to meet ultimate retirement needs is drawing increased attention in Thailand. In order to develop healthcare programs to meet retirees’ needs, the demand and supply of health services in Thailand should be explored. This study then analyzes the healthcare utilization and reports on the willingness to pay for voluntary health insurance after retirement. The demand for health services is defined as health services utilization, while the supply is defined as voluntary health insurance programs after retirement. The target is insured Thai workers and retired workers under the Social Health Insurance Scheme whose age is between 40-69 years and whose income is more than 10,000 Baht per month. In order to identify the associated factors explaining healthcare utilization, 400 insured workers under the Social Health Insurance Scheme in Bangkok, vicinity, and in the Central, North, North-east, and Southern areas of Thailand were gathered by using quota sampling. The study found that health status was statistically significant, with a negative sign; however, personal income and the presence of chronic illness were statistically significant with a positive sign. Nonetheless, gender, age, marital status, education, employment, family size, household income, present living, private health insurance contract, and health care risks were not statistically significant. Consequently, of all the explanatory variables, characteristics related to health care utilization, were poor heath condition, more income persona, and the increasing the number of chronic illnesses. Poor health with an increasing number of the chronic illnesses will lead to increased health service utilization accordingly. Since the number of the elderly is increasing together with the number of retired workers under the SHI scheme, voluntary health insurance after retirement will develop to minimize the catastrophic health risks after retirement. Therefore, willingness to pay is needed to evaluate whether healthcare insurance programs after retirement are worthwhile and meet people’s needs and expectations. Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) was used to detect the main determinants of the demand for health insurance, examine which attributes are important when individuals choose voluntary health care insurance, and estimate the willingness to pay of workers under the SHI scheme regarding hypothetical health insurance after retirement. A conditional logit model was estimated to examine the impact of various factors that affect the willingness of respondents to join the hypothetical health insurance scheme. In the DCE questionnaire, the respondents were asked to choose their preferred scenario between status quo (using free healthcare services for the elderly, which has free but limited coverage of outpatient healthcare expenses, and inpatient healthcare that can be used in public hospitals covering only a non-private rooms and accommodations) and an alternative scenario (with hypothetical health insurance after retirement, including inpatient, outpatient, long-term care expenses and work compensation) that varied along several attributes, one of which was the price of the alternative. The attributes and levels were developed by using in-depth interviews with health insurance agents, reviewing private health insurance policies, and focus groups with the workers under the SHI scheme whose age was over 40 years. The sample of 300 workers under the Social Health Insurance Scheme in Bangkok and outside Bangkok areas was interviewed by using a structured questionnaire from March to May, 2012. The study found that the workers under the SHI scheme that were more willing to pay for voluntary health insurance after retirement were likely to be younger, healthier (less presence of chronic illness), more educated, have children, live in BKK, and also be more aware of health insurance. In addition, the workers under the SHI scheme were willing to pay for inpatient (IPD) and outpatient (OPD) health service expenses more than other healthcare benefits. The findings are useful for planning and designing health insurance and health services to meet workers’ needs and expectations.285 leaves : ; 30 cm.application/pdfengThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.text--thesis--doctoral thesis