Cost Containment and Managed Care: Evidence from German Macro Data

Andree Ehlert (), Dirk Oberschachtsiek () and Stefan Prawda ()
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Andree Ehlert: Leuphana University of Lueneburg, Germany
Dirk Oberschachtsiek: Leuphana University of Lueneburg, Germany
Stefan Prawda: Leuphana University of Lueneburg, Germany

No 284, Working Paper Series in Economics from University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics

Abstract: The major German health care reforms undertaken since the late 1990s resulted in the adoption of selective contracting mechanisms in a formerly sectorally separated health care system. These reforms marked the launch of managed care in Germany that is expected to yield both a higher quality of care and cost containment. We investigate if managed care had an in fluence on the structure of health care expenditure in Germany during the start-up phase of managed care from 2004 to 2008. We focus on pharmaceutical spending by statutory sickness funds (i.e. German law- enforced health insurance). We followed a macroeconomic evaluation approach based on a regional panel data set in contrast to previous research and were thus able to control for a comprehensive set of regional and demographic variables. We discuss alternative model specifications and include a range of sensitivity analyses. Our results suggest that in contrast to public perception the share of managed care contracts has a positive impact on pharmaceutical spending.

Keywords: Managed care; Health care expenditure; Pharmaceutical expenditur; Panel data; German health care reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I18 L14 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2013-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hea and nep-ias
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