Does Physician Dispensing Increase Drug Expenditures?

Christian Schmid Boris Kaiser
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Boris Kaiser and Christian Schmid

Diskussionsschriften from Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft - CRED

Abstract: We analyze whether the possibility for physicians to dispense drugs increases health care expenditures due to the incentives created by the markup on drugs sold. Using comprehensive physician-level data from Switzerland, we exploit the fact that there is regional variation in the dispensing regime to estimate policy effects. The empirical strategy consists of doubly-robust estimation which combines inverseprobability weighting with regression. Our main finding suggests that if dispensing is permitted, physicians produce significantly higher drug costs in the order of 30% per patient.

Date: 2013-10
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Working Paper: Does Physician Dispensing Increase Drug Expenditures? (2013)
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