The Choice of Adult Health Care Provider and Access Across Income Groups: The Philippine Case

This paper investigates the demand for adult health care in the Phiippines using a theoretical model that implies a natural interrelation between price and income. The demand function takes on a conditional/mixed logit (CLGT) form. The CLGT model is estimated using country-wide data from the 1981 National Health Survey, which has information on price that is collected contemporaneously with the rest of the variables. The results show that price and income do affect the demand for adult health care and that poor adults are more sensitive to price changes than rich adults. The implication is that user fees are regressive and hence would affect adversely the access of adults to health care.