한국 의료비 지출에 영향을 미치는 요인 분석: VECM을 중심으로

Abstract

According to the OECD Health Data 2009, the rate of increase in total health care costs in Korea is highest among all member countries. This study aims to suggest the most appropriate policy to repress this rise in costs, using a vector error correction model (VECM). We first selected several variables – demographic compositions, economic conditions, and insurance coverage rates as the demand-initiated factors, and the number of doctors, hospital beds, and medical equipment as the supply-initiated factors. We then ran the VECM models to evaluate the long and short run relationships among variables. Our findings imply that population aging is significant in the long run and expansion of insurance coverage is in the short run, whereas the supply-initiated factors exert only trivial or transitory effects.