IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/vfsc14/100403.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effect of Copayments on Children's and Adolescents' Demand for Medical Care

Author

Listed:
  • Paul, Alexander
  • Nilsson, Anton

Abstract

We exploit a policy change in Sweden to estimate the effect of copayments on the demand for children's and adolescents' usage of medical care. To this end, we use population-wide registry data including detailed characteristics of individuals and their medical visits. We examine whether the response to prices varies by socioeconomic background or health status. When visits to doctors become free of charge, we find that individuals see a doctor more often. This effect does not represent a substitution away from inpatient care. The size of the response differs by health and income but not by educational attainment

Suggested Citation

  • Paul, Alexander & Nilsson, Anton, 2014. "The Effect of Copayments on Children's and Adolescents' Demand for Medical Care," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100403, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc14:100403
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/100403/1/VfS_2014_pid_796.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lundborg, Petter & Nilsson, Anton & Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2014. "Adolescent health and adult labor market outcomes," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 25-40.
    2. Dahlia K. Remler & Adam J. Atherly, 2003. "Health status and heterogeneity of cost‐sharing responsiveness: how do sick people respond to cost‐sharing?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(4), pages 269-280, April.
    3. Mark V. Pauly & Thomas G. Mcguire & Pedro P. Barros (ed.), 2011. "Handbook of Health Economics," Handbook of Health Economics, Elsevier, volume 2, number 2.
    4. Amy Finkelstein & Sarah Taubman & Bill Wright & Mira Bernstein & Jonathan Gruber & Joseph P. Newhouse & Heidi Allen & Katherine Baicker, 2012. "The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment: Evidence from the First Year," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(3), pages 1057-1106.
    5. Manning, Willard G, et al, 1987. "Health Insurance and the Demand for Medical Care: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(3), pages 251-277, June.
    6. Amitabh Chandra & Jonathan Gruber & Robin McKnight, 2007. "Patient Cost-Sharing, Hospitalization Offsets, and the Design of Optimal Health Insurance for the Elderly," NBER Working Papers 12972, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Katherine Baicker & Dana Goldman, 2011. "Patient Cost-Sharing and Healthcare Spending Growth," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(2), pages 47-68, Spring.
    8. Elofsson, Stig & Undén, Anna-Lena & Krakau, Ingvar, 1998. "Patient charges -- a hindrance to financially and psychosocially disadvantage groups seeking care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 46(10), pages 1375-1380, March.
    9. repec:mpr:mprres:7006 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Keeler, Emmett B. & Rolph, John E., 1988. "The demand for episodes of treatment in the health insurance experiment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 337-367, 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. Tzu-Ting Yang & Hsing-Wen Han & Hsien-Ming Lien, 2014. "Patient Cost-Sharing and Healthcare Utilization in Early Childhood: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design," Working Papers 14C003, Canadian Centre for Health Economics.
    2. Tertilt Michèle & Berg Gerard J. van den, 2015. "The Association Between Own Unemployment and Violence Victimization Among Female Youths," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 235(4-5), pages 499-516, August.

    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. Nilsson, Anton & Paul, Alexander, 2018. "Patient cost-sharing, socioeconomic status, and children's health care utilization," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 109-124.
    2. Ma, Yuanyuan & Nolan, Anne & Smith, James P., 2020. "Free GP care and psychological health: Quasi-experimental evidence from Ireland," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    3. Toshiaki Iizuka & Hitoshi Shigeoka, 2018. "Free for Children? Patient Cost-sharing and Healthcare Utilization," NBER Working Papers 25306, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Zarek C. Brot-Goldberg & Amitabh Chandra & Benjamin R. Handel & Jonathan T. Kolstad, 2017. "What does a Deductible Do? The Impact of Cost-Sharing on Health Care Prices, Quantities, and Spending Dynamics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(3), pages 1261-1318.
    5. Aviva Aron-Dine & Liran Einav & Amy Finkelstein & Mark Cullen, 2012. "Moral hazard in health insurance: How important is forward looking behavior?," Discussion Papers 11-007, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    6. Powell, David & Goldman, Dana, 2021. "Disentangling moral hazard and adverse selection in private health insurance," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 222(1), pages 141-160.
    7. Naimi Johansson & Niklas Jakobsson & Mikael Svensson, 2019. "Effects of primary care cost-sharing among young adults: varying impact across income groups and gender," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 20(8), pages 1271-1280, November.
    8. Dunn, Abe, 2016. "Health insurance and the demand for medical care: Instrumental variable estimates using health insurer claims data," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 74-88.
    9. Michael R.M. Abrigo & Timothy J. Halliday & Teresa Molina, 2022. "Expanding health insurance for the elderly of the Philippines," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(3), pages 500-520, April.
    10. Kurt Lavetti & Thomas DeLeire & Nicolas R. Ziebarth, 2023. "How do low‐income enrollees in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces respond to cost‐sharing?," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 90(1), pages 155-183, March.
    11. Benedic N. Ippolito, 2016. "Financial incentives, hospital care, and health outcomes: Evidence from fair pricing laws," AEI Economics Working Papers 863745, American Enterprise Institute.
    12. Anja Sautmann & Samuel Brown & Mark Dean, 2016. "Subsidies, Information, and the Timing of Childrenís Health Care in Mali," Working Papers 2016-2, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    13. Lopes, Francisca Vargas & Riumallo Herl, Carlos J. & Mackenbach, Johan P. & Van Ourti, Tom, 2022. "Patient cost-sharing, mental health care and inequalities: A population-based natural experiment at the transition to adulthood," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 296(C).
    14. Nicolas R. Ziebarth, 2018. "Social Insurance and Health," Contributions to Economic Analysis, in: Health Econometrics, volume 127, pages 57-84, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    15. Feng Huang & Li Gan`, 2017. "The Impacts of China's Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance on Healthcare Expenditures and Health Outcomes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(2), pages 149-163, February.
    16. Nicolas Ziebarth, 2014. "Assessing the effectiveness of health care cost containment measures: evidence from the market for rehabilitation care," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 41-67, March.
    17. 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.
    18. Hayen, Arthur P. & Klein, Tobias J. & Salm, Martin, 2021. "Does the framing of patient cost-sharing incentives matter? the effects of deductibles vs. no-claim refunds," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    19. Yuanyuan Ma & Anne Nolan, 2017. "Public Healthcare Entitlements and Healthcare Utilisation among the Older Population in Ireland," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(11), pages 1412-1428, November.
    20. Klein, Tobias J. & Salm, Martin & Upadhyay, Suraj, 2022. "The response to dynamic incentives in insurance contracts with a deductible: Evidence from a differences-in-regression-discontinuities design," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:zbw:vfsc14:100403. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfsocea.html .

    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.