Dinâmica de expansão do mercado de planos de saúde no Brasil: uma análise por meio de um modelo baseado em agentes

Abstract

The supplementary health sector stands out for its importance in the Brazilian economy, covering a significant number of beneficiaries (24.5% of the Brazilian population). Moreover, it presents itself as an alternative of health care services for the population. The present study analyzes the expansion dynamics of the health insurance market in Brazil, in a regional way, through the variations in the number of medical and hospital operators and their beneficiaries from a regional perspective, from 2004 to 2017. As this study, we intend to answer the following questions: How does the dynamics of expansion of the market of health plan operators and the behavior of the number of beneficiaries in the different regions of Brazil occur? To this end, in this study, suppose that the dynamics of the supplementary health market is a macroscopic phenomenon that emerges from microscopic interactions between the agents that make up this market (operators and individuals). Based on this hypothesis, a model based on heterogeneous agents modulated by two levels is developed. Among the main results, there is a market restricted to the entry of new operators and greater competition, which corroborated the decrease in the number of companies in operation. In a complementary way, when we turn to the increase of new beneficiaries in all the regions, there is an expanding market, especially, fueled by the interaction between its different actors.