An Empirical Model of Health Care Demand under Non-linear Pricing

Rainer Winkelmann

No 688, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: In 2004, the German Social Health Insurance introduced a co-payment for the first doctor visit in a calendar quarter. I combine a structural model of health care demand and a difference-in-differences strategy to estimate the effect of that reform on the number of visits. In the model, the implied incentive to delay a first visit also affects subsequent visits, as the expected remaining time to the end of quarter is reduced. This effect has been ignored by the prior literature using standard hurdle count models. Data are from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Results show no statistically significant reduction in visits due to the reform.

Keywords: Count data; Poisson process; co-payment; hurdle model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C25 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 p.
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: An empirical model of health care demand under non-linear pricing (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp688

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