Aging Population、Remaining Life And Medical Expenses

The impacts of population aging on health expense has been the topic of social concerns.The increase in age does not necessarily lead to medical expenses rising.And the increase of age should be divided into healthy age increase and the unhealthy one.Unhealthy age increase will lead to medical expenses rising,while the healthy age increase shows little impact on medical expenses.Meanwhile,this paper consults the conclusions of Zweifel and other scholars that age(calendar age)will not cause a sharp rise in medical expenses,but the remaining lifetime will affect medical expenses growth essentially.Based on the ideas above and the relevant previous research,also with Andersen’s health service utilization model and Grossman’s health demand model,this paper clarifies the factors affecting the medical expenses of the elderly,defines the relevant concepts,and sets up the influencing factors framework of medical expenses for the elderly.In this paper,the influence of age on the medical expenses of the elderly is mainly studied.And among control variables,the key variable time to death is added.The data used in this study is from Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey in the year of 2005,2008/2009 and 2011/2012.The survival sample samples were obtained by screening the 2005 survey data.And by tracing the three-period’s data above,we screen out the death sample set.Then we use the two-part model to examine the effects of age on medical expenses for the elderly.According to theoretical and empirical analysis,we can draw the following conclusions: Firstly,in different ages of the elderly,the impacts of age on medical expenses are different.It’s found that the impact of medical expenses between age60-69 is not significant.Between age 70-79,age and medical expenses are positively related.However,there is a negative correlation between age and the medical expenses above age 90.Secondly,time to death is an important factor influencing the growth of medical expenses.It is found that age remains an impact on medical expenses although time to death is controlled.However,the time to death is more significant than age is,and the coefficient of significance was relatively large,especially the two variables of 1 year to death and 2 years to death.Based on the conclusions above,the following countermeasures are put forward in this paper: to accelerate the establishment of long-term care insurance system,to execute accurate allocation of medical resources,medical care resources andlong-term care resources;to reduce medical expenses by hospice care;to establish and improve the elderly health management system.The innovation of this paper lies in the relationship between age,residual life and medical expenses.By adding time to death to the control variables,the relationship between age and medical expenses is clarified,so as to reach a comprehensive study of impacts population aging has on health care.