Inequity in publicly funded physician care: what is the role of private prescription drug insurance?

Sara Allin and Jeremiah Hurley

Health Economics, 2009, vol. 18, issue 10, 1218-1232

Abstract: This study examines the impact that private financing of prescription drugs in Canada has on equity in the utilization of publicly financed physician services. The complementary nature of prescription drugs and physician service use alongside the reliance on private finance for drugs may induce an income gradient in the use of physicians. We use established econometric methods based on concentration curves to measure equity in physician utilization and its contributors in the province of Ontario. We find that individuals with prescription drug insurance make more physician visits than do those without insurance, and the effect on utilization is stronger for the likelihood of a visit than the conditional number of visits, and stronger for individuals with at least one chronic condition than those with no conditions. Results of the equity analyses reveal that the most important contributors to the pro‐rich inequity in physician utilization are income and private prescription drug insurance, while public insurance, which covers older people and those on social assistance, has a pro‐poor effect. These findings highlight that inequity in access to and use of publicly funded services may arise from the interaction with privately financed health services that are complements to the use of public services. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.1428

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:wly:hlthec:v:18:y:2009:i:10:p:1218-1232

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones

More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().