Factors associated with the choice of supplementary hospital insurance in Switzerland – an analysis of the Swiss Health Survey

Table 1 Description of independent variables

Variable	Description	Unit / Levels
Sex	Sex	0 = male 1 = female
Age	Five-year age groups	25–29; …; 80+
Nationality	Nationality	0 = Swiss 1 = Non-Swiss
Marital status	Marital status	0 = not married/single, divorced, and widowed 1 = married or registered partnership
Number of children in same household	Number of children (< 18 years) living in the same household	0; 1; 2; 3+
Education	Level of formal schooling	1 = compulsory 2 = secondary 3 = tertiary
Labour market status	Labour market status	1 = inactive 2 = unemployed 3 = employed
Household income^,1	Household net income per month, quintile	1st-5th quintile
Language region	Language of the respondent’s residence	0 = German and Romansh 1 = French 2 = Italian
Rural area	Urbanicity of the respondent’s residence	0 = urban 1 = rural
Ever smoker	Respondent has ever smoked	0 = no 1 = yes
Deductible^,2	Yearly deductible in the basic health insurance	0 = standard/lowest (default) 1 = choice deductible higher than default
Standard insurance model^,3	Standard model in the mandatory health insurance (without restricted access to providers)	0 = no 1 = yes
Preference for free specialist choice	Importance of having the possibility to choose specialist without restrictions	0 = rather not important or not important 1 = important or very important

¹ Compulsory education corresponds to nine years of schooling in Switzerland, secondary education corresponds to either high school or vocational training, and tertiary education corresponds to a university degree (including universities of applied sciences and Federal Institutes of Technology)
² Income refers to the self-reported income of all members of the same household, after deducting social security contributions and adding/deducting alimonies. For single-household individuals, we replaced this variable by the self-reported personal income variable.
² The available deductible levels were changed multiple times during the study period. We recoded the information in the survey as displayed here to make it comparable across all years under analysis.
³ We differentiated only between the standard and any other model type, including health maintenance organizations (HMOs), preferred providers lists, and telemedicine models.

ISSN: 1472-6963