title: Choosing your health insurance package: a method for measuring the public's preferences for changes in the national health insurance plan.
abstract: With rising healthcare expenditure and limited budgets available, countries are having to make choices about the content of health insurance plans. The views of the general population can help determine such priorities. In this article, we investigate whether preferences of the general population regarding the content of health insurance plans could be measured with the help of a stated preference method: the Basket Method (BM). In this method, people use an online tool to include or exclude healthcare interventions from their hypothetical insurance package; this then affects their monthly premium. The study was conducted in the Netherlands. In total, 1007 members of two panels managed by the NIVEL filled out an online questionnaire that included the BM. The suitability of the BM was tested with the help of five criteria, e.g. the BM's ability to distinguish between healthcare interventions. Our results suggest that the BM is suitable for measuring preferences of the general population regarding the content of the health insurance plan, as it performs well on most criteria. Policy makers can use these preferences when deciding the content of the health insurance plan. Its contents will then be more aligned to the population's needs and preferences.
authors.affiliation: NIVEL, Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research, P.O. Box 1568, 3500 BN Utrecht, Netherlands. Electronic address: a.victoor@nivel.nl.
authors.forename: Aafke
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Victoor
authors.affiliation: NIVEL, Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research, P.O. Box 1568, 3500 BN Utrecht, Netherlands. Electronic address: j.hansen@nivel.nl.
authors.forename: Johan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hansen
authors.affiliation: Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum, Department of Medical Decision Making, P.O. Box 9600, 2300 RC Leiden, Netherlands. Electronic address: vandenakker@lumc.nl.
authors.forename: M Elske
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: van den Akker-van Marle
authors.affiliation: University of York, Centre for Health Economics, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK. Electronic address: bernard.vandenberg@york.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: van den Berg
authors.affiliation: Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum, Department of Medical Decision Making, P.O. Box 9600, 2300 RC Leiden, Netherlands. Electronic address: w.b.van_den_hout@lumc.nl.
authors.forename: Wilbert B
authors.initials: WB
authors.lastname: van den Hout
authors.affiliation: NIVEL, Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research, P.O. Box 1568, 3500 BN Utrecht, Netherlands. Electronic address: j.dejong@nivel.nl.
authors.forename: Judith D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: de Jong
mesh_terms: D002755:Choice Behavior; D003258:Consumer Behavior; D017048:Health Care Costs; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D007348:Insurance, Health / Q000191:economics*; D020407:Internet; D020380:Needs Assessment; D009426:Netherlands; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: Choice behaviour; Consumer preference; Health insurance; Insurance coverage; Methodological study; Treatment