IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v124y2015icp115-120.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cost sharing and hospitalizations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions

Author

Listed:
  • Arrieta, Alejandro
  • García-Prado, Ariadna

Abstract

During the last decade, Chile's private health sector has experienced a dramatic increase in hospitalization rates, growing at four times the rate of ambulatory visits. Such evolution has raised concern among policy-makers. We studied the effect of ambulatory and hospital co-insurance rates on hospitalizations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSC) among individuals with private insurance in Chile. We used a large administrative dataset of private insurance claims for the period 2007–8 and a final sample of 2,792,662 individuals to estimate a structural model of two equations. The first equation was for ambulatory visits and the second for future hospitalizations for ACSC. We estimated the system by Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) corrected by heteroskedasticity via Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation. Results show that increased ambulatory visits reduced the probability of future hospitalizations, and increased ambulatory co-insurance decreased ambulatory visits for the adult population (19–65 years-old). Both findings indicate the need to reduce ambulatory co-insurance as a way to reduce hospitalizations for ACSC. Results also showed that increasing hospital co-insurance does have a statistically significant reduction on hospitalizations for the adult group, while it does not seem to have a significant effect on hospitalizations for the children (1–18 years-old) group. This paper's contribution is twofold: first, it shows how the level of co-insurance can be a determinant in avoiding unnecessary hospitalizations for certain conditions; second, it highlights the relevance for policy-making of using data on ACSC to improve the efficiency of health systems by promoting ambulatory care as well as population health.

Suggested Citation

  • Arrieta, Alejandro & García-Prado, Ariadna, 2015. "Cost sharing and hospitalizations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 115-120.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:124:y:2015:i:c:p:115-120
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.11.026
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953614007497
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.11.026?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Newhouse, Joseph P., 2006. "Reconsidering the moral hazard-risk avoidance tradeoff," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 1005-1014, September.
    2. repec:idb:brikps:35838 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Anna Aizer, 2007. "Public Health Insurance, Program Take-Up, and Child Health," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(3), pages 400-415, August.
    4. Pauly, Mark V. & Blavin, Fredric E., 2008. "Moral hazard in insurance, value-based cost sharing, and the benefits of blissful ignorance," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 1407-1417, December.
    5. Kaestner, R. & Joyce, T. & Racine, A., 2001. "Medicaid eligibility and the incidence of ambulatory care sensitive hospitalizations for children," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 305-313, January.
    6. Sapelli, Claudio, 2004. "Risk segmentation and equity in the Chilean mandatory health insurance system," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 259-265, January.
    7. Dafny, Leemore & Gruber, Jonathan, 2005. "Public insurance and child hospitalizations: access and efficiency effects," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 109-129, January.
    8. Ellis, Randall P. & Manning, Willard G., 2007. "Optimal health insurance for prevention and treatment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1128-1150, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Martina Schmiedhofer & Anna Slagman & Stella Linea Kuhlmann & Andrea Figura & Sarah Oslislo & Anna Schneider & Liane Schenk & Matthias Rose & Martin Möckel, 2022. "Emergency Departments as Care Providers for Patients with Cardiac Ambulatory Care Sensitive and Mental Health Conditions: Qualitative Interview and Focus Group Study with Patients and Physicians," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(10), pages 1-17, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marianne P. Bitler & Madeline Zavodny, 2014. "Medicaid: A Review of the Literature," NBER Working Papers 20169, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Thomas Buchmueller & John C. Ham & Lara D. Shore-Sheppard, 2015. "The Medicaid Program," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, Volume 1, pages 21-136, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Glazer, Jacob & McGuire, Thomas G., 2012. "A welfare measure of “offset effects” in health insurance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(5), pages 520-523.
    4. repec:mrr:papers:wp341 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Almond, Douglas & Currie, Janet, 2011. "Human Capital Development before Age Five," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 15, pages 1315-1486, Elsevier.
    6. Patrick Richard, 2016. "The Burden of Medical Debt Faced by Households with Dependent Children in the United States: Implications for the Affordable Care Act of 2010," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 212-225, June.
    7. Anna Aizer, 2007. "Public Health Insurance, Program Take-Up, and Child Health," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(3), pages 400-415, August.
    8. Borrescio-Higa, Florencia, 2015. "Can Walmart make us healthier? Prescription drug prices and health care utilization," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 37-53.
    9. Toshiaki Iizuka & Hitoshi Shigeoka, 2018. "Free for Children? Patient Cost-sharing and Healthcare Utilization," NBER Working Papers 25306, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Laura R. Wherry & Bruce D. Meyer, 2016. "Saving Teens: Using a Policy Discontinuity to Estimate the Effects of Medicaid Eligibility," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 51(3), pages 556-588.
    11. Ellis, Randall P. & Jiang, Shenyi & Manning, Willard G., 2015. "Optimal health insurance for multiple goods and time periods," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 89-106.
    12. Glazer Jacob & Huskamp Haiden A. & McGuire Thomas G., 2012. "A Prescription for Drug Formulary Evaluation: An Application of Price Indexes," Forum for Health Economics & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 15(1), pages 1-26, March.
    13. Katherine Baicker & Sendhil Mullainathan & Joshua Schwartzstein, 2015. "Behavioral Hazard in Health Insurance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(4), pages 1623-1667.
    14. Andrey Aistov & Ekaterina Aleksandrova & Christopher J. Gerry, 2021. "Voluntary private health insurance, health-related behaviours and health outcomes: evidence from Russia," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 22(2), pages 281-309, March.
    15. Marika Cabral & Mark R. Cullen, 2017. "The Effect Of Insurance Coverage On Preventive Care," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(3), pages 1452-1467, July.
    16. Thompson, Owen, 2017. "The long-term health impacts of Medicaid and CHIP," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 26-40.
    17. Jacques Drèze & Erik Schokkaert, 2013. "Arrow’s theorem of the deductible: Moral hazard and stop-loss in health insurance," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 147-163, October.
    18. Katherine Meckel, 2020. "Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease? Unintended Effects of Payment Reform in a Quantity-Based Transfer Program," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(6), pages 1821-1865, June.
    19. Lara Shore-Sheppard, 2010. "Child Health," NBER Chapters, in: Targeting Investments in Children: Fighting Poverty When Resources Are Limited, pages 77-119, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Seog, S. Hun & Hong, Jimin, 2024. "Moral hazard in loss reduction and state-dependent utility," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 151-168.
    21. Kaestner, Robert & Sasso, Anthony T. Lo, 2015. "Does seeing the doctor more often keep you out of the hospital?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 259-272.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:124:y:2015:i:c:p:115-120. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.