Local Competition and Physicians’ Pricing Decisions: New Evidence from France

Benjamin Montmartin and Mathieu Escot
Additional contact information
Mathieu Escot: UFC Que Choisir

No 2017-31, GREDEG Working Papers from Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France

Abstract: More than 40% of French specialist practitioners are able to balance bill their patients. We examine the determinants of their choice to switch or not to an optional system of self-limitation of fees in exchange for subsidies, and the role in particular of local competition. We use a logit model with data on 5568 gynecologists, ophthalmologists and pediatricians, in years 2012 and 2016. We find that their decision is guided primarily by their characteristics such as their initial price or type of practice, and the share of patients that they can balance bill. The local competitive environment does not have a significant impact on the pricing decisions of private physicians. Therefore, governments that want to limit balance billing need to apply a mandatory ceiling rather than introducing an optional system.

Keywords: Balance billing; Health care access; fee regimes; Fee-for-services; Local and Price competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H51 I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2017-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://195.220.190.85/GREDEG-WP-2017-31.pdf First version, 2017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gre:wpaper:2017-31

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GREDEG Working Papers from Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Patrice Bougette ().