Willingness to share costs of health insurance

The purpose of this investigation, undertaken in 1988, was to find out citizens' willingness to share the costs of health insurance in metropolitan Taipei. The individuals sampled were from three groups: government employee insurer GEI, Labor insurer LI, and others OT. A stratified random sampling method and a closed-format questionnaire were used in this study. A total of 300 samples were taken from GEI, 500 form LI and 300 from OT. The total number of effective questionnaires were 1065. The questionnaire had 8 parts including individual basic data, consciousness of self health conditions, knowledge of LI, knowledge of GEI, degree of satisfaction with medical services, medical care utilization, willingness of health insurance, and willingness to share costs. The results showed that most people pay, most respondents would only be willing to pay a limited amount. The different factors positively influencing a willingness to cost share were level of education, average income and knowledge of health insurance, while the degree of satisfaction towards medical services was a negative influence. Since the public is not yet willing to accept a cost-sharing system, this study was of limited value in trying to find out the explanatory or predicting factors. Nevertheless, because of the negative reactions of respondents, we are obliged to more carefully and circumspectly rethink the implementation of a cost-sharing system.