Does Physician Dispensing Increase Drug Expenditures? Empirical Evidence from Switzerland.
This paper analyzes whether the opportunity for physicians to dispense drugs increases healthcare expenditures. We study the case of Switzerland, where dispensing physicians face financial incentives to overprescribe and sell more expensive pharmaceuticals. Using comprehensive physician-level data, we exploit the regional variation in the dispensing regime to estimate causal effects. The empirical strategy consists of a doubly-robust estimation that combines inverse probability weighting with regression. Our main finding suggests that dispensing leads to higher drug costs on the order of 34% per patient.
Department of Economics and Center for Regional Economic Development (CRED), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
Boris
B
Kaiser
Department of Economics and Center for Regional Economic Development (CRED), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
Christian
C
Schmid
D016265:Conflict of Interest; D016527:Drug Costs; D006801:Humans; D057970:Inappropriate Prescribing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010820:Physicians / Q000191:economics*; D013557:Switzerland
drug expenditures; healthcare costs; physician dispensing; supply-induced demand; treatment effects