The effect of reinsuring a deductible on pharmaceutical spending
| Autor: | Rudy Douven, Onno van der Galiën, Marielle Non, Richard C. van Kleef |
|---|---|
| Přispěvatelé: | Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management |
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
Reinsurance
Adult Male Control (management) Deductible Insurance Coverage 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Health care Health insurance Deductibles and Coinsurance Humans 030212 general & internal medicine Poverty Netherlands Actuarial science Insurance Health biology business.industry 030503 health policy & services Health Policy Euros Quarter (United States coin) biology.organism_classification Pharmaceutical Preparations Costs and Cost Analysis Cost sharing Female Business Health Expenditures 0305 other medical science |
| Zdroj: | Health Policy, 123(10), 976-981. Elsevier Ireland Ltd |
| ISSN: | 1872-6054 0168-8510 |
| Popis: | Many countries have cost sharing schemes in health insurance to control health care expenditures. The Dutch basic health insurance includes a mandatory deductible of currently 385 euros per adult per year. To avoid affordability problems, several municipalities offer a group contract for low-income people in which the mandatory deductible is ‘reinsured’. More specifically, this means that out-of-pocket spending under the deductible is covered by supplementary insurance. By comparing groups with and without the reinsurance option, this study examines whether low-income people are price-sensitive when it comes to pharmaceutical spending. We use a unique dataset from a Dutch health insurer with anonymized individual insurance claims for the period 2014–2017. The data allows for a clean difference-in-difference analysis as it contains both municipalities without reinsurance and municipalities that introduced reinsurance on January 1st 2017. We find that the introduction of reinsurance led to a statistically significant increase in pharmaceutical spending of 16% in the first quarter of 2017 and 7% in the second quarter. For the second half of 2017 the effect is small and not statistically significant. This study adds to the evidence that low-income people are indeed price-sensitive when it comes to pharmaceutical spending. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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