Determinants of Supplementary Health Insurance Demand: Case Study of Iran.

Voluntary health insurance schemes help those who are not included in social health insurance (1). These are divided into supplementary and selfemployed insurance. Generally, the supplementary health insurance provides health facilities in nongovernmental sectors for the insured, fills the gap in services and commitments of basic health insurance, (2) makes the room for innovation, diversity and competition in the field of health insurance activities (2). In addition, self-employed health insurance is awarded to persons who work with an employer or alone (self-funding) based on work permits issued by the competent authorities or under the recognition of Social Security Organization (3). This study emphasizes on measuring main determinants of demand for supplementary health insurance. Data are extracted from website of Statistical Center of Iran in 2012. We select a sample of 4055 urban households and 1594 rural ones. Due to binary nature of dependent variable (y), we use a Logistic regression model to estimate supplementary health insurance demand (4).