Free for Children? Patient Cost-sharing and Healthcare Utilization

Toshiaki Iizuka and Hitoshi Shigeoka

No 25306, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This study exploits over 5,000 variations in subsidy generosity across ages and municipalities in Japan to examine how children respond to healthcare prices. We find that free care significantly increases outpatient spending, with price elasticities considerably smaller than for adults. Price responses are substantially larger when small copayments are introduced, indicating more elastic demand around a zero price. We also find that increased utilization primarily reflects low-value and costly care: increased outpatient spending neither reduces subsequent hospitalization by “avoidable” conditions nor improves short- or medium-term health outcomes. By contrast, inappropriate use of antibiotics and costly after-hours visits increase.

JEL-codes: I11 I13 I18 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ias
Note: CH EH PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w25306.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Free for Children? Patient Cost-sharing and Healthcare Utilization (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25306

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w25306

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().