A Study of Cancer and Catastrophic Illness based on Taiwan National Health Insurance Database

重大傷病是我國全民健康保險的重要特色之一，透過社會保險的風險分擔機制，病患享有免部分負擔等優惠，降低因為罹病帶來的財務負擔，但重大傷病同時也成為全民健保的主要支出項目。民國102年領取重大傷病證明者不過98餘萬人（約總人口的4%），但其一年的醫療費用多達一千五百多億元（接近總支出的27%），平均每位重大傷病患者的醫療費用約為平均值的7.34倍，其中癌症又是重大傷病中人數最多者，大約佔了49%（資料來源：衛生福利部中央健康保險署）。因為許多重大傷病的發生率、盛行率與年齡成正比（黃泓智等人，2004），未來隨著人口老化，全民健保支出也將跟著上升。 本文使用全民健保資料庫，探討近十年重大傷病（尤其是癌症）趨勢，估計重大傷病的年齡別發生率、死亡率，評估人口老化對全民健保造成的影響，其中承保資料檔（ID）、重大傷病檔（HV）為本研究主要的依據資料。而由於健保資料庫的資料種類及數量龐雜，在初期資料的偵錯及處理上非常重要但也相當費時，至於發生率、死亡與否的判斷亦十分棘手，因此過程中我們將一一說明資料分析步驟及注意事項。本文發現癌症及重大傷病的盛行率逐年上升，但發生率並沒有明顯變化，加上近年癌症死亡率幾乎不變（但台灣全體國民的死亡率逐年遞降），因為台灣的人口老化，預期未來罹患癌症人數會逐年增加，癌症將繼續蟬聯十大死因之首，但罹癌死亡率的下降也可發現近年醫療進步所造成的影響。此外，我們也考量隨機死亡模型（Lee-Carter Model），發現無論是癌症死亡率、或是罹癌死亡率都有不錯的估計結果。而在文末也提出癌症病患的就醫行為以供後續研究者參考。Catastrophic illness (CI) is one of the key features of Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI). Through risk-sharing mechanisms of social insurance, it can reduce the financial burden of the CI patients since treating the CI is usually expensive. However, the CI also becomes a major expenditure item of NHI. The people receiving the CI card are just 0.98 million in 2013 (about 4% of the total population), but their smedical costs are over 150 billion NT dollars (nearly 27% of total expenditures). The average medical cost per CI patient is about 7.34 times of the national average. (Source: Department of Health and National Health Insurance Agency). Because the incidence and prevalence rates increase with age (Huang et al, 2004), the total NHI expenditure is expected to increase in the future due to population aging. This study intends to use the NHI database, including the records of personal identification and out-patient visit from all CI patients, to explore the incidence and mortality rates, for example, of CI patients. Because the NHI database is big and messy, we shall first debug and clean them. Also, since the death of CI patients are not fully reported in the NHI database, we propose a method to identify the deaths and use the official statistics to evaluate. The results show that the prevalence rates of all CI increased every year, but their incidence rates did not change significantly. The mortality rates of cancer patients also did not change much. Based on these findings, we expect the proportion of CI patients and their size will continue to grow. In addition, we applied the Lee-Carter model to the cancer mortality rates, and the fit is pretty good