Envejecimiento, salud y economía. La Encuesta Nacional sobre Salud y Envejecimiento en México

Precautionary Savings in Mexico: Evidence from the Mexican Health and Aging Study

Precautionary saving is the additional saving done by individuals to protect them financially in situations of uncertainty and reduce their vulnerability for negative shocks that may affect their consumption levels. This paper investigates the existence and extent of savings motivated by precaution in Mexico for people aged between 50 and 75, using data from the Mexican Health and Ageing Study 2003. The empirical strategy is based on a test of the direct relationship between the accumulated wealth and the uncertainty generated by the social security status, in particular the availability of health insurance, accounting also for the expectation to receive a retirement pension. The endogeneity-corrected estimates do not yield results that unequivocally support the existence of private savings as a risk protection mechanism, implying that the public protection system has an important role in reducing the vulnerability of the population studied.

Building the Universidad Nacional de Colombia Hospital: Reconciling social and academic aspects

<p>In the process of building the National University Hospital, an<br />analysis of the changing epidemiological profile of the population of Bogotá was undertaken, which examined the health care needs of the city, the academic needs of the university and institutional possibilities. It was made an analysis of the demographic and epidemiological profile of the population of Bogotá.</p><p><br />It was concluded that there were factors associated with the<br />epidemiological transition of aging, such as a low availability<br />of health services for the elderly and diseases related to that<br />care. Just as in the university, the hospital needs to develop<br />all aspects of patient care to be able to adequately respond<br />to the needs of this demographic from an interdisciplinary<br />perspective, ensuring quality care based on the criteria of<br />timeliness, accessibility, relevance, sufficiency, and continuity.</p><p>A proposal is outlined concluding that the first phase of the<br />portfolio of services that the University Hospital offers must<br />be geared towards geriatric care and chronic illnesses, due to<br />the aging of the general population as a result of a decline in<br />fertility and mortality. This care would cater towards so-called<br />permanent conditions that result in disability, or not easily<br />reversible physiopathological conditions that require longterm<br />care, as well as special training in secondary prevention<br />and rehabilitation for the patient and the family.</p>

Health insurance and use of alternative medicine in Mexico

OBJECTIVES

I analyze the effect of coverage by health insurance on the use of alternative medicine such as folk healers and homeopaths, in particular if it complements or substitutes conventional services.

METHODS

Panel data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) is used to estimate bivariate probit models in order to explain the use of alternative medicine while allowing the determinant of interest, access to health insurance, to be an endogenous factor.

RESULTS

The findings indicate that households with insurance coverage less often use alternative medicine, and that the effect is much stronger among poor than among rich households.

CONCLUSIONS

Poor households substitute away from traditional medicine towards conventional medicine.

Health insurance coverage and the use of preventive services by Mexican adults

The lack of health insurance coverage could be a potentially important deterrent to the use of preventive health care by older adults with high rates of chronic co-morbidities. We use survey data from 12 100 Mexican adults ages 50 and older who participated in the 2001 Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) to analyze the relation between health insurance coverage and the use of preventive health-care services in Mexico. Uninsured adults were less likely to use preventive screenings for hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes and (breast, cervical and prostate) cancer than insured adults. After adjusting for other factors affecting preventive care utilization in a logistic regression model, we found that these results still hold for high cholesterol and diabetes screening. Similar results hold for the population not working during the survey week and for adults earning below 200% of the poverty line. Our results suggest that insured adults are in a relatively better position to detect some chronic diseases - and have them treated promptly - than uninsured adults because they have better access to cost-effective preventive screenings. Recent public policy initiatives to increase health insurance coverage rates in Mexico could lead to substantially higher preventive health-care utilization rates and improvements in population health.