The impact of aging on different types of health care: The example of the Polish health insurance system.

The aging phenomenon, which is being observed all over the world, can strongly affect health policy and a planning in the health care sector. However, the impact of demographic changes on different parts of it can be varied. The main objective of this study was to check the possible impact of aging on health expenditure (HE) regarding different types of health care and to evaluate whether this impact is significant for all analyzed areas. To show a relationship between age and HE a special indicator (old-age sensitivity) was defined, showing a difference between the standardized value of HE per capita in the age group 65+ and in the group 20 to 64 (defined as the reference group). Then a simple prognosis of expenditure was prepared. Both analyses were done separately for 11 types of health care services and 2 types of goods reimbursement. The results show that while sensitivity varies between the different types of care, however, it is strong in most of them. Because of the prognosis, the expenditure will be increasing for the 9 types of care and decreasing for 4 of them. While in the case of the low values of sensitivity the HE is actually decreasing, the high value of sensitivity does not result in a growing tendency. Our main conclusion is that it is very important for health policy and planning to take into account the diversity of the types of health care and the different influences of changes in the size and structure of population on them.