Public support for cigarette price increase in Indonesia.

BACKGROUND: The current tobacco control policies in Indonesia are known to be ineffective in reducing tobacco consumption. Therefore, increasing cigarette prices is one of the effective instruments that should be supported by governments and society. This study aims to assess public support for cigarette price increases as well as to generate scientific evidence for the government and policymakers. METHOD: This cross-sectional survey obtained data through telephone interviews with 1000 respondents aged ≥18 years old in Indonesia. The interviews started from 1 May 2018 to 31 May 2018. RESULT: Respondents were varied in terms of age, gender, level of education, income, occupation, area of living and smoking status. This study found that 87.9% of the respondents including 80% of smokers support cigarette price increase to prevent children from buying cigarettes. Approximately 74.0% of smokers said they would stop smoking if cigarette prices were Rp70 000 (US$5) per package. The multivariate analysis revealed that age, income, money spent on cigarettes per day and the perception of current cigarette prices are the factors influencing support for higher cigarette prices. CONCLUSION: The increase in cigarette prices is supported by society at large, including active smokers. The government must consistently adjust cigarette prices through an excise taxing and cigarette retail price mechanism. Governments, academicians, non-governmental organisations and tobacco control activists should generate a unified understanding that increasing cigarette prices will improve overall life quality.

The regional and referral compliance of online healthcare systems by Indonesia National Health Insurance agency and health-seeking behavior in Indonesia.

PURPOSE: Whether the provision of online health care referral systems by the Indonesia National Health Insurance Agency has ensured healthcare referral compliance raises much concern due to the continuing deficit. This study examines the pattern of healthcare referral process, regional and referral compliance from 2015 to 2016. To provide comprehensive analysis on how people seek treatment, this study also aims to understand health-seeking behavior in Indonesia, the utilization of alternative treatment, and health information-seeking behavior on social media. METHOD: The data come from three data files, namely the National Health Insurance membership master data, the First Level Health Facilities transaction data and the Advanced Referral Health Facilities transaction data of 1,697,452 individuals. The regional compliance applies a logit regression model, while referral compliance applies descriptive statistics of the referral pathway. This study also follows a quantitative approach using an online questionnaire, with 463 respondents who have National Health Insurance which applies an ordered logit model. RESULT: We found that several demographic variables and regional health facility availability affect regional compliance. Moreover, we found 19.3% of the transactions did not comply with the prescribed referral sequence. The prescribed referral sequence was mostly followed for patients with malignant diseases. We also found men who perceive that their health condition is healthy will less likely seek health services compared to women. Further, the tendency of alternative treatment increases health-seeking behavior, and the tendency of seeking health information on social media increases the frequency seeking health services. CONCLUSION: We recommend the prescribed referral sequence to be re-evaluated especially for patients with malignant disease; the referral process should not be based on hospital classes but on the competency of the healthcare facility which may indirectly address the deficit issue. It is imperative that the government evaluate health promotion approaches to men and women, both direct and indirect through their significant others.

A longitudinal study of agriculture households in Indonesia: The effect of land and labor mobility on welfare and poverty dynamics.

The conventional wisdom of Arthur Lewis's dual sector model says that households in the agricultural (traditional) sector who can move out to a non-agricultural (modern) sector will become better off. We then scrutinize the last three waves of the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS) to analyze the existence of the dual theorem. Our study uses Difference in Difference (DiD) regressions and ordered logit regressions to confirm that moving out of agriculture sectors has significantly increased the welfare of poor agricultural households, especially in the period of 2000-2007, but this is not the case of 2007-2014. Movement out of agricultural sectors decreases the probability of being always poor by 13.5 percentage points. However, when the economy transforms into a more advanced economy, simply moving out of agriculture does not guarantee that farmers, especially landless farmers, will become better off. Welfare improvement requires a shifting to formal non-agricultural sectors, but unfortunately farmers might not be readily equipped with the skills required in formal sectors. Our study also obviously confirms that farmland is an important asset for agricultural households. Agricultural households experiencing a decrease of agricultural land also decreased their expenditure per capita by IDR 36,833 in 2000 and IDR 68,683 in 2007. These findings suggest that, currently, moving out of agriculture is not the solution to improve the well-being of farmers. Keeping farmland ownership, raising investment in human capital, and the modernization of agriculture should be the main concerns in agricultural development.