The Economics of Hospital Trips and Health Care Reform

Andreas Million, Ralph Rotte () and Klaus Zimmermann ()
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Andreas Million: affiliation not available
Ralph Rotte: RWTH Aachen University

No 22, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: One cornerstone of current attempts to reform the German public health care system by introducing private insurance schemes is the assumption that economic incentives play an important role in individual decision-making about using medical help. This hypothesis is examined for the case of demand for hospital care which covers the largest part of public insurance expenditures. The paper applies various methods for count data analysis of the frequency of hospital trips. Contrary to comparative studies for other countries, we find that there is no significant impact of insurance schemes on hospitalization. Therefore, the current efforts to reduce expenditures by relying on consumer behavior are unlikely to work.

Keywords: health care reform; hospitalization; hospital cost inflation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 1998-09
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