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

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

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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.

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

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Date of creation: 11 Jul 2009
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Handle: RePEc:lmu:muenec:10951

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

NEP-ALL-2009-07-28 (All new papers)
NEP-HEA-2009-07-28 (Health Economics)

References listed on IDEAS
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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. [Downloadable!]
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. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
- Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 1994. "Unnatural Experiments? Estimating the Incidence of Endogenous Policies," NBER Working Papers 4956, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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. [Downloadable!]

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