Health Care Reform and the Number of Doctor Visits - an Econometric Analysis
34 Pages Posted: 31 Oct 2001
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Health Care Reform and the Number of Doctor Visits - an Econometric Analysis
Date Written: October 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% 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: C25, I11, I18
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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