Does Abolishing a Copayment Increase Doctor Visits? A Comparative Case Study
-
Tapio Haaga
,
Petri Böckerman
,
Mika Kortelainen
und
Janne Tukiainen
Abstract
Insurance coverage increases health care consumption, but less is known whether moderate copayments affect adults’ primary care utilization in a system characterized by gatekeeping. We analyze whether abolishing a 14-euro copayment for visits to general practitioners (GP) in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, increased the number of GP visits among adults and especially among low-income individuals. Using a difference-in-differences (DD) design and combining several administrative registers from 2011 to 2014, we find that the abolition is associated with only a small increase in GP visits (+0.04 visits annually, or +4.4 %, for all adults). The increase is driven by low-income adults (+0.06 visits, or +4.5 %, at the bottom 40 %). Although the point estimates are rather robustly positive, the conclusions regarding the statistical significance are sensitive to how we account for clustering in a setting characterized by only one treated cluster and a finite number of comparison clusters.
Funding source: Sosiaali-ja Terveysministeriö
Funding source: Yrjö Jahnssonin Säätiö
Award Identifier / Grant number: 20197209
Acknowledgment
We thank Mikko Peltola, Heikki Kauppi, and THL for support and Liisa T. Laine, Tuomas Markkula, Mikko Nurminen, Jukka Pirttilä, Lauri Sääksvuori, Jussi Tervola, and Maria Vaalavuo for comments and suggestions. We also thank all seminar participants who have provided comments to this study and our other related projects. This work is supported by Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation (research grant No. 20197209) and by the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. Replication codes: https://github.com/tapiohaa/ASMA2. Working paper versions: https://osf.io/8q5b2/.
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Supplementary Material
This article contains supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2023-0056).
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Gender Differences and Firm Performance: Evidence from India
- The Effect of Soft Skills on Academic Outcomes
- Search and Matching in Political Corruption
- The New Form Agency Problem: Cooperation and Circular Agency
- Lobbying for Tariff Protection, International Technology Licensing and Consumer Surplus
- Active Labour Market Policies: What Works for the Long-Term Unemployed?
- Does Abolishing a Copayment Increase Doctor Visits? A Comparative Case Study
- An Experimental Analysis of Patient Dumping Under Different Payment Systems
- Does Excellence Pay Off? Evidence from the Italian Wine Market
- Letters
- Estimating the Socio-Economic Status of the U.S. Capitol Insurrectionists
- The Effect of Elevating the Supplemental Poverty Measure on Government Program Eligibility and Spending
- Data-Driven Health Innovation and Privacy Regulation
