title: Co-payments for prescription drugs and the demand for doctor visits--evidence from a natural experiment.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, University of Zurich, Switzerland. winkelmann@sts.unizh.ch
authors.forename: Rainer
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Winkelmann
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D015984:Causality; D017047:Cost Sharing / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D011307:Drug Prescriptions / Q000191:economics*; D005858:Germany; D018166:Health Care Reform / Q000191:economics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand / Q000639:trends*; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D017059:Models, Econometric; D009313:National Health Programs / Q000191:economics* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D004366:Nonprescription Drugs / Q000191:economics; D009819:Office Visits / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016012:Poisson Distribution; D011203:Poverty; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors
chemical_list: D004366:Nonprescription Drugs