Although there are numerous studies on impact evaluation of overall health insurance, little is
known on the impact of health insurance on health care utilization and out-of-pocket health care
spending of children, especially in developing countries. This paper measures the impact of child
health insurance on health care utilization and spending of children from 6 to 14 years old in
Vietnam using two recent nationally representative surveys. Unlike previous empirical studies
which found a positive effect of health insurance on health care utilization in Vietnam, we did not
find a statistically significant effect of school health insurance as well as free health insurance for
children on outpatient health care contacts. However, the school health insurance and free health
insurance help the insured children decrease out-of-pocket spending per outpatient contact by
around 14 and 26 percent, respectively.