Citizens’ Preferences on Health Care Expenditure Allocation: Evidence from Greece

Xesfingi, Sofia and Vozikis, Athanassios (2014): Citizens’ Preferences on Health Care Expenditure Allocation: Evidence from Greece.

Abstract

Priority setting and resource allocation across various health care functions is a critical issue in health policy and strategic decision making. As health resources are limited while there are so many health challenges to resolve, consumers and payers have to make difficult decisions about expenditure allocation. Our research focus on the (dis)agreement between citizens’ preferences and actual public health expenditure across broad health care functions, on whether this (dis)agreement is persistent, on whether various demographic factors amplify this (dis)agreement and to derive useful implications for public health policies. Using survey data of 3,029 citizens in Greece for the year 2012 and employing logit estimation techniques, we analyzed the effect of demographic and other factors in shaping citizens’ (dis)agreement with public health expenditure allocation. Our results demonstrate the important role of income, family members and residence in shaping citizens’ preferences regarding health expenditure priorities in almost all health care functions, while other demographic factors such as job, age, gender and marital status do partly associate and play a significant role.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: citizen's preferences, health expenditure, health care allocation, priorities' setting
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I10 - General; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I11 - Analysis of Health Care Markets; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I12 - Health Behavior; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I18 - Government Policy ; Regulation ; Public Health; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J10 - General; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J18 - Public Policy

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