IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v67y2008i7p1183-1189.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Insurance covered and non-covered complementary and alternative medicine utilisation among adults in Taiwan

Author

Listed:
  • Shih, Shu-Fang
  • Lew-Ting, Chih-Yin
  • Chang, Hsing-Yi
  • Kuo, Ken N.

Abstract

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has been characterized by prevalence, cost, and patterns of use. Factors determining its utilization have also been analyzed, either generally or for specific diseases, but few studies have considered the determinants of its frequency of use. Taiwan's pluralistic health care system and comprehensive insurance program covering Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) provide an interesting case to explore what forms of CAM people use, why and how often they use them. By using Taiwan's 2001 National Health Interview Survey and linking it with National Health Insurance (NHI) claims data, this study aims to investigate the socio-demographic, economic, behavioral and health determinants of use and frequency of use for both non-covered and covered CAM in Taiwan. The former consists of services practiced by non-regulated or non-NHI contracted practitioners and the latter includes those TCM covered by NHI. Our study showed that the determinants of using non-covered and covered CAM differ with respect to socio-demographic and behavioral factors, and health needs. Our evidence suggests that future CAM research must delineate between use and frequency of use to better understand the underlying factors contributing to initiation and continuity of CAM use.

Suggested Citation

  • Shih, Shu-Fang & Lew-Ting, Chih-Yin & Chang, Hsing-Yi & Kuo, Ken N., 2008. "Insurance covered and non-covered complementary and alternative medicine utilisation among adults in Taiwan," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(7), pages 1183-1189, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:67:y:2008:i:7:p:1183-1189
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(08)00305-5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mullahy, John, 1986. "Specification and testing of some modified count data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 341-365, December.
    2. Lew-Ting, Chih-Yin, 2005. "Antibiomedicine belief and integrative health seeking in Taiwan," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(9), pages 2111-2116, May.
    3. Chi, Chunhuei, 1994. "Integrating traditional medicine into modern health care systems: Examining the role of Chinese medicine in Taiwan," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 307-321, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Steven Yen & Hung-Hao Chang & Tsui-Fang Lin, 2013. "Out-of-pocket expenditures on traditional and Western medicine in Taiwan," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 58(4), pages 583-592, August.
    2. Liu, Li-Fan & Tian, Wei-Hua & Yao, Hui-Ping, 2012. "Utilization of health care services by elderly people with National Health Insurance in Taiwan: The heterogeneous health profile approach," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 246-255.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Boncinelli, Fabio & Bartolini, Fabio & Casini, Leonardo, 2018. "Structural factors of labour allocation for farm diversification activities," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 204-212.
    2. Chiu, Stephen W.K. & Ko, Lisanne S.F. & Lee, Rance P.L., 2005. "Decolonization and the movement for institutionalization of Chinese medicine in Hong Kong: a political process perspective," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(5), pages 1045-1058, September.
    3. Kan, Kamhon & Fu, Tsu-Tan, 1997. "Analysis of Housewives' Grocery Shopping Behavior in Taiwan: An Application of the Poisson Switching Regression," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 29(2), pages 397-407, December.
    4. Silva João M. C. Santos & Tenreyro Silvana & Windmeijer Frank, 2015. "Testing Competing Models for Non-negative Data with Many Zeros," Journal of Econometric Methods, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 29-46, January.
    5. Bilgic, Abdulbaki & Florkowski, Wojciech J., 2003. "Truncated-At-Zero Count Data Models With Partial Observability: An Application To The Freshwater Fishing Demand In The Southeastern U.S," 2003 Annual Meeting, February 1-5, 2003, Mobile, Alabama 35185, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    6. Domenico Piccolo & Rosaria Simone, 2019. "The class of cub models: statistical foundations, inferential issues and empirical evidence," Statistical Methods & Applications, Springer;Società Italiana di Statistica, vol. 28(3), pages 389-435, September.
    7. Greene, William, 2007. "Functional Form and Heterogeneity in Models for Count Data," Foundations and Trends(R) in Econometrics, now publishers, vol. 1(2), pages 113-218, August.
    8. Christopher J. W. Zorn, 1998. "An Analytic and Empirical Examination of Zero-Inflated and Hurdle Poisson Specifications," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 26(3), pages 368-400, February.
    9. Ajiferuke, Isola & Famoye, Felix, 2015. "Modelling count response variables in informetric studies: Comparison among count, linear, and lognormal regression models," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 499-513.
    10. Timothy C. Haab, "undated". "A Utility Based Repeated Discrete Choice Model of Consumer Demand," Working Papers 9611, East Carolina University, Department of Economics.
    11. Niklas Elert, 2014. "What determines entry? Evidence from Sweden," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 53(1), pages 55-92, August.
    12. Schmitz, Hendrik, 2013. "Practice budgets and the patient mix of physicians – The effect of a remuneration system reform on health care utilisation," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 1240-1249.
    13. Christian Kleiber & Achim Zeileis, 2016. "Visualizing Count Data Regressions Using Rootograms," The American Statistician, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 70(3), pages 296-303, July.
    14. Gurmu, Shiferaw, 1998. "Generalized hurdle count data regression models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 263-268, March.
    15. Sandro Casal & Matteo Ploner & Alec N. Sproten, 2019. "Fostering The Best Execution Regime: An Experiment About Pecuniary Sanctions And Accountability In Fiduciary Money Management," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 57(1), pages 600-616, January.
    16. Gurmu, Shiferaw & Rilstone, Paul & Stern, Steven, 1998. "Semiparametric estimation of count regression models1," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 123-150, November.
    17. Brouwer, Erik & Budil-Nadvornikova, Hana & Kleinknecht, Alfred, 1997. "Are urban agglomerations a better breeding place for product innovation? ˜ product innovation?," Serie Research Memoranda 0039, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.
    18. Antonio Menezes & Ainura Uzagalieva, 2013. "The Demand of Car Rentals: a Microeconometric Approach with Count Models and Survey Data," Review of Economic Analysis, Digital Initiatives at the University of Waterloo Library, vol. 5(1), pages 25-41, June.
    19. Abbas Moghimbeigi & Mohammed Reza Eshraghian & Kazem Mohammad & Brian Mcardle, 2008. "Multilevel zero-inflated negative binomial regression modeling for over-dispersed count data with extra zeros," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(10), pages 1193-1202.
    20. J. M. C. Santos Silva & Silvana Tenreyro, 2022. "The Log of Gravity at 15," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 21(3), pages 423-437, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:67:y:2008:i:7:p:1183-1189. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.