Health Insurance Status and Physician Behavior in Germany

Hendrik Jürges
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Hendrik Juerges

Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, 2009, vol. 129, issue 2, 297-307

Abstract: Germany has a two-tier system of statutory and primary private health insurance. Both insurance types provide fee-for-service insurance, but chargeable fees for identical services are more than twice as large for privately insured as for statutorily insured patients. Using German SOEP 2002 data, I analyze the effect of insurance status on the insured's number of doctor visits. Conditional on health, privately insured patients are less likely to contact a physician than publicly insured but more frequently visit a doctor following a first contact. This is indirect evidence for the hypothesis that physicians over-treat privately insured patients at least relative to the statutorily insured.

JEL-codes: I11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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