Co‐payments for prescription drugs and the demand for doctor visits – Evidence from a natural experiment

Rainer Winkelmann

Health Economics, 2004, vol. 13, issue 11, 1081-1089

Abstract: The German health care reform of 1997 provides a natural experiment for evaluating the price sensitivity of demand for physicians' services. As a part of the reform, co‐payments for prescription drugs were increased step up to 200%. However, certain groups of people were exempted from the increase, providing a natural control group against which the changed demand for physicians' services of the treated, those subject to increased co‐payments, can be assessed. The differences‐in‐differences estimates indicate that increased co‐payments reduced the number of doctor visits by about 10% on an average. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2004
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https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.868

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Working Paper: Co-Payments for Prescription Drugs and the Demand for Doctor Visits - Evidence from a Natural Experiment (2003)
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