Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Copayments for doctor visits in Germany and the probability of visiting a physician - Evidence from a natural experiment

Contents:

Author Info

  • Farbmacher, Helmut

Abstract

The German health care reform of 2004 imposes a charge of 10 Euro for the first visit to a doctor in each quarter of the year. At first glance, there is no inhibiting effect of this fee on utilization in the German Socio-Economic Panel. However, this study reveals that the true effect is diluted by a special characteristic of the fee. Exploiting random variation in the interview date, this study finds a substantial effect of the new fee on the probability of visiting a physician. In addition, the identification strategy makes it possible to disentangle this effect from the influence of the contemporaneous increase of copayments for prescription drugs.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10951/2/Farbmacher2009_DP.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Munich, Department of Economics in its series Discussion Papers in Economics with number 10951.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 11 Jul 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:lmu:muenec:10951

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Ludwigstr. 28, 80539 Munich, Germany
Phone: +49-(0)89-2180-2926
Fax: +49-(0)89-2180-3510
Web page: http://www.vwl.uni-muenchen.de
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: copayment; moral hazard; differences-in-differences;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Jonas Schreyögg & Markus Grabka, 2010. "Copayments for ambulatory care in Germany: a natural experiment using a difference-in-difference approach," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 331-341, June.
  2. Carine Van De Voorde & Eddy Van Doorslaer & Erik Schokkaert, 2001. "Effects of cost sharing on physician utilization under favourable conditions for supplier-induced demand," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(5), pages 457-471.
  3. Besley, Timothy & Case, Anne, 2000. "Unnatural Experiments? Estimating the Incidence of Endogenous Policies," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(467), pages F672-94, November.
  4. Boris Augurzky & Thomas Bauer & Sandra Schaffner, 2006. "Copayments in the German Health System – Do They Work?," RWI Discussion Papers 0043, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Wuppermann, Amelie Catherine, 2011. "Empirical Essays in Health and Education Economics," Munich Dissertations in Economics 13187, University of Munich, Department of Economics.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lmu:muenec:10951

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Robert Ulbricht).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.