BACKGROUND/AIMS: The Korean government has expanded the coverage of the national insurance scheme for four major diseases: cancers, cardiovascular diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, and rare diseases. This policy may have a detrimental effect on the budget of the national health insurance agency. Like taxes, national insurance premiums are levied on the basis of the income or wealth of the insured. METHODS: Using a preference elicitation method, we attempted to estimate how much people are willing to pay for insurance premiums that would expand their coverage for liver cancer treatment. RESULTS: We calculated the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) through the marginal rate of substitution between the two attributes of the insurance premium and the total annual treatment cost by adopting conditional logit and mixed logit models. CONCLUSIONS: The effects of various other terms that could interact with socioeconomic status were also estimated, such as gender, income level, educational attainment, age, employment status, and marital status. The estimated MWTP values of the monthly insurance premium for liver cancer treatment range from 4,130 KRW to 9,090 KRW.
Age Factors ; Aged ; Employment ; Female ; Humans ; Liver Neoplasms/diagnosis/*economics/mortality/*therapy ; Logistic Models ; Male ; Middle Aged ; *Patient Preference ; Republic of Korea ; Sex Factors ; Social Class ; Survival Rate

Endometriosis is a disorder that presents as endometrial glands and stroma outside the uterine cavity and its musculature. It is a common gynecologic disease affecting approximately 15% of fertile women. However, polypoid endometriosis is rare. Our patient visited the hospital due to bowel habit changes and bloody stools. The colonoscopy revealed a large ulcerating polypoid mass in the rectum. Image studies including CT scan, MRI, and PET-CT suggested rectal cancer but the biopsy was negative for a malignancy. Finally, she was diagnosed with rectal polypoid endometriosis by a surgical rectal mass resection. We report a case of rectal polypoid endometriosis mimicking a rectal polypoid cancer.
Biopsy ; Colonoscopy ; Endometriosis* ; Female ; Genital Diseases, Female ; Humans ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging ; Rectal Neoplasms* ; Rectum ; Tomography, X-Ray Computed ; Ulcer