Social protection and demand for health care among children in the Philippines
Issue Date
2017
Abstract
The Philippines recently introduced two distinct but related large-scale social protection programs that, first, provides conditional cash transfers (CCT) to poor households, and, second, automatically enrolls them into the government’s social health insurance program. This has resulted to dramatic increase in health insurance coverage, especially among the poor. In this paper, we empirically assess the joint impact of the two programs on the healthcare demand for children. Overall, we find encouraging impacts of social protection on the demand for healthcare services. While we find no direct impact on morbidity, our results suggest that the social health insurance and the CCT program jointly were able to induce greater hospital visits for both preventive and curative care, and lowers out-of-pocket expenditures. However, we also document possible leakages in the government’s programs, as well as potential indication of healthcare service differentiation based on quality. Both these concerns may undermine the expected outcomes of the country’s social protection programs.
Source or Periodical Title
Philippine Journal of Development
Volume
44
Issue
1
Page
45-70
Document Type
Article
College
College of Development Communication (CDC)
Physical Description
illustrations; tables
Language
English
Subject
Social protection; Medical care
Recommended Citation
Abrigo, Michael Ralph M. and Paqueo, Vicente B. B., "Social protection and demand for health care among children in the Philippines" (2017). Journal Article. 4080.
https://www.ukdr.uplb.edu.ph/journal-articles/4080