Gerfin, Michael; Kaiser, Boris; Schmid, Christian (June 2014). Health Care Demand in the Presence of Discrete Price Changes (Discussion Papers 14-03). Bern: Department of Economics
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Deductibles in health insurance generate nonlinear budget sets and dynamic incentives. This paper uses detailed individual claims data from a large Swiss insurance company to estimate the response in health care demand to the discrete price increase that is generated by resetting the deductible at the start of each calendar year. We use a regression discontinuity type framework based on daily data to estimate the change in
health care demand right before and right after the turn of the year. We find that for individuals with high deductibles health care demand drops by 27%, which translates into an elasticity of −.21. The decrease is most pronounced for inpatient care and prescription drugs. By contrast, for individuals with low deductibles there is no significant change in health care demand (except for prescription drugs). A remaining open question is whether the observed behavioral responses can be attributed to intertemporal substitution or whether they constitute a classic moral hazard effect.
Item Type: |
Working Paper |
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Division/Institute: |
03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Economics |
UniBE Contributor: |
Gerfin, Michael, Kaiser, Boris, Schmid, Christian Philipp |
Subjects: |
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 330 Economics |
Series: |
Discussion Papers |
Publisher: |
Department of Economics |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Lars Tschannen |
Date Deposited: |
18 Dec 2020 14:57 |
Last Modified: |
02 Mar 2023 23:33 |
JEL Classification: |
C31, D12, I13 |
BORIS DOI: |
10.7892/boris.145802 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/145802 |
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