Does Abolishing a Copayment Increase Doctor Visits? A Comparative Case Study

Haaga Tapio (), Petri Böckerman (), Kortelainen Mika () and Janne Tukiainen
Additional contact information
Haaga Tapio: Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Helsinki, Finland
Kortelainen Mika: Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Helsinki, Finland

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2024, vol. 24, issue 1, 187-204

Abstract: Insurance coverage increases health care consumption, but less is known whether moderate copayments affect adults’ primary care utilization in a system characterized by gatekeeping. We analyze whether abolishing a 14-euro copayment for visits to general practitioners (GP) in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, increased the number of GP visits among adults and especially among low-income individuals. Using a difference-in-differences (DD) design and combining several administrative registers from 2011 to 2014, we find that the abolition is associated with only a small increase in GP visits (+0.04 visits annually, or +4.4 %, for all adults). The increase is driven by low-income adults (+0.06 visits, or +4.5 %, at the bottom 40 %). Although the point estimates are rather robustly positive, the conclusions regarding the statistical significance are sensitive to how we account for clustering in a setting characterized by only one treated cluster and a finite number of comparison clusters.

Keywords: cost-sharing; copayment; out-of-pocket costs; primary care use; general practitioner; difference-in-differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H42 I11 I13 I14 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2023-0056 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

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:bpj:bejeap:v:24:y:2024:i:1:p:187-204:n:2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/bejeap/html

DOI: 10.1515/bejeap-2023-0056

Access Statistics for this article

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy is currently edited by Hendrik Jürges and Sandra Ludwig

More articles in The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().