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Health Insurance Status and Physician-Induced Demand for Medical Services in Germany: New Evidence from Combined District and Individual Level Data

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dc.creator Jürges, Hendrik
dc.date 2007
dc.date.accessioned 2013-10-16T06:59:54Z
dc.date.available 2013-10-16T06:59:54Z
dc.date.issued 2013-10-16
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/10419/18421
dc.identifier ppn:528421107
dc.identifier.uri http://koha.mediu.edu.my:8181/xmlui/handle/10419/18421
dc.description Germany is one of the few OECD countries with a two-tier system of statutory and primary private health insurance. Both types of insurance provide fee-for-service insurance, but chargeable fees for identical services are more than twice as large for privately insured patients than for statutorily insured patients. This price variation creates incentives to induce demand primarily among the privately insured. Using German SOEP 2002 data, I analyze the effects of insurance status and district (Kreis-) level physician density on the individual number of doctor visits. The paper has four main findings. First, I find no evidence that physician density is endogenous. Second, conditional on health, privately insured patients are less likely to contact a physician but more frequently visit a doctor following a first contact. Third, physician density has a significant positive effect on the decision to contact a physician and on the frequency of doctor visits of patients insured in the statutory health care system, whereas, fourth, physician density has no effect on privately insured patients' decisions to contact a physician but an even stronger positive effect on the frequency of doctor visits than the statutorily insured. These findings give indirect evidence for the hypothesis that physicians induce demand among privately insured patients but not among statutorily insured.
dc.language eng
dc.publisher Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW) Berlin
dc.relation DIW-Diskussionspapiere 689
dc.rights http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen
dc.subject I11
dc.subject ddc:330
dc.subject supplier-induced demand
dc.subject health care utilization
dc.subject Gesundheitsversorgung
dc.subject Nachfrage
dc.subject Gesundheitswesen
dc.subject Schätzung
dc.subject Deutschland
dc.title Health Insurance Status and Physician-Induced Demand for Medical Services in Germany: New Evidence from Combined District and Individual Level Data
dc.type doc-type:workingPaper
dc.coverage 2002


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