The effect of late retirement on health services utilization.

• Main Authors: Wu, Chunhua, 吳春樺
• Other Authors: Lin, Wender
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/13805950200138082202

碩士 === 長榮大學 === 醫務管理學系碩士班 === 99 === Objective: Taiwan’s average retirement age is around 54-56, far below the average of OECD countries. Controversy exits about the timing of retirement on health service utilization. This study aimed to compare the health service utilization between the retired of various retiring age and the workers with similar health status. Methods: With a retrospective cohort study design, we used Taiwan’s Longitudinal Health Insurance Dataset in 2005 (LHID 2005) which consisted of 1 million of representative sample of National Health Insurance beneficiaries to identify people who retired between 1997 and 2004 and aged 50-69. People who retired at the age of 50-59 are classified into early retirement group, whereas people retired after age of 60 are classified into late retirement group. We then traced back 3 years before their retirement and followed up for 6 years after their retirement to measure their health service utilization. Their counterparts who are not retired but have similar health status are selected by a greedy matching algorithm based on propensity score. The significance of difference in health service utilization between the matched pair is test using paired t test or Wilcoxon’s signed rank test, as appropriate. In additions, a mixed model is applied to control covariates when comparing the difference of health service utilization before and after retirement between the pairs. Results: After matching all the covariates which may associated with the utilization of health services, people in the early retirement group (N=4,636) significantly utilized more health services in 5 years after their retirement compared to their counterparts who are continuous workers, the difference range from 2,563 New Taiwan Dollars (NTD) in first year of retirement to 6,087 NTD. Nevertheless, people in late retirement group (N=1,497) have similar health utilization with their continuous worker counterparts. Conclusion: Apart from financial burden to the pension system, early retirement may have negative financial impact on the health care system as well. Policy to encourage late retirement should be seriously considered to mitigate the consequence of accelerating aging society.