The Impact of Health Insurance Expansion on Physician Treatment Choice: Medicare Part D and Physician Prescribing

Tianyan Hu, Sandra L. Decker and Shin-Yi Chou

No 20708, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We test the effect of the introduction of Medicare Part D on physician prescribing behavior by using data on physician visits from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) 2002-2004 and 2006-2009 for patients aged 60-69. We use a combined DD-RD specification that is an improvement over either the difference-in-difference (DD) or regression discontinuity (RD) designs. Comparing the discrete jump in outcomes at age 65 before and after 2006, we find a 35% increase in the number of prescription drugs prescribed or continued per visit and a 55% increase in the number of generic drugs prescribed or continued, providing evidence of physician response to changes in patient out-of-pocket costs.

JEL-codes: I13 I18 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-hea and nep-ias
Note: EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published as Tianyan Hu & Sandra L. Decker & Shin-Yi Chou, 2017. "The impact of health insurance expansion on physician treatment choice: Medicare Part D and physician prescribing," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, vol 17(3), pages 333-358.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w20708.pdf (application/pdf)

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:nbr:nberwo:20708

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w20708

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().