Health Care Reform and the Number of Doctor Visits - an Econometric Analysis

39 Pages Posted: 23 Jun 2001

See all articles by Rainer Winkelmann

Rainer Winkelmann

University of Zurich - Statistics and Empirical Economic Research; IZA Institute of Labor Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

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Date Written: June 2001

Abstract

The paper evaluates the German health care reform of 1997, using the individual number of doctor visits as outcome measure. A new econometric model, the Probit-Poisson-log-normal model with correlated errors, describes the data better than existing count data models. Moreover, it has an attractive structural interpretation, as it allows the reforms to have a different effect at different parts of the distribution. The overall effect of the reform was a 10 percent reduction in the number of doctor visits. The effect was much larger in the lower part of the distribution than in the upper part.

Keywords: Co-payment, moral hazard, count data, probit-Poisson-log-normal model

JEL Classification: I11, I18, C25

Suggested Citation

Winkelmann, Rainer, Health Care Reform and the Number of Doctor Visits - an Econometric Analysis (June 2001). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=273342 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.273342

Rainer Winkelmann (Contact Author)

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