Abstract
This paper investigates whether the voluntary deductible in the Dutch health insurance system reduces moral hazard or acts only as a cost reduction tool for low-risk individuals. We use a sample of 14,089 observations, comprising 2,939 individuals over seven waves from the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social sciences panel for the analysis. We employ bivariate models that jointly model the choice of a deductible and health care utilization and supplement the identification with an instrumental variable strategy. The results show that the voluntary deductible reduces moral hazard, especially in the decision to visit a doctor (extensive margin) compared with the number of visits (intensive margin). In addition, a robustness test shows that selection on moral hazard is not present in this context.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1251-1269 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Health Economics (United Kingdom) |
Volume | 29 |
Issue number | 10 |
Early online date | 31 Jul 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2020 |
Funding
This study was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) Grant 022.005.020 and benefitted from comments from audiences at the iHEA conference 2019 and the AEHESG workshop 2019, as well as discussion with Agne Suziedelyte at BEC 2019. In this paper, we use data from the LISS (Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social sciences) panel administered by CentERdata (Tilburg University, the Netherlands).
Funders | Funder number |
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CentERdata | |
Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research | |
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | 022.005.020 |
Universiteit van Tilburg |
Keywords
- deductible
- health insurance
- moral hazard
- selection