Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ijecbs/v30y2023i1p31-49.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Higher Deductibles Slow Health Spending Growth?

Author

Listed:
  • Molly Frean
  • Mark V. Pauly
Abstract
High health care spending growth is regarded in all countries as a potential policy problem. The potential for patient cost-sharing to reduce spending levels has been studied extensively; however, there has been very little work on how cost-sharing may also influence spending growth. In this paper, we relate deductibles as a measure of cost-sharing to health care spending growth at the market level. We analyze a novel combination of US state-level panel datasets from 2002 to 2012 and find that higher deductible levels in private group insurance are associated with significantly lower spending growth, particularly for pharmaceuticals. We observe similar results in both OLS and instrumental variables models, where we use measures of employer and worker preferences as instruments for deductible levels. We theorize and conclude that cost-sharing affects spending growth by constraining the use of more costly new technology, a major driver of health care spending growth worldwide.

Suggested Citation

  • Molly Frean & Mark V. Pauly, 2023. "Do Higher Deductibles Slow Health Spending Growth?," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(1), pages 31-49, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ijecbs:v:30:y:2023:i:1:p:31-49
    DOI: 10.1080/13571516.2022.2135883
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13571516.2022.2135883
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13571516.2022.2135883?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    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:taf:ijecbs:v:30:y:2023:i:1:p:31-49. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CIJB20 .

    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.