'Do I Really Need to Go to Rehab? I'd Say No, No, No.' Estimating Price Elasticities of Convalescent Care Programs

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science. Terms of use: Documents inThe decision to publish a submission in SOEPpapers is made by a board of editors chosen by the DIW Berlin to represent the wide range of disciplines covered by SOEP. There is no external referee process and papers are either accepted or rejected without revision. Papers appear in this series as works in progress and may also appear elsewhere. They often represent preliminary studies and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be requested from the author directly. AbstractThis study is the first to estimate the price elasticities of demand for both medical rehabilitation programs and treatment at health spas. In Germany, the Statutory Health Insurance (SHI) covers both forms of therapy if administered in authorized medical facilities on referral from a physician. While health resort stays are prescribed to recover from general symptoms of poor health and are preventive in character, medical rehabilitation implies recovering from a specific illness or accident. From 1997 onwards, the German government more than doubled the copayments for both types of health care services from DM 12 (e 6.14) to DM 25 (e 12.78) per day for those insured under the SHI. Using longitudinal microdata from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), this exogenous price variation allows us to study the causal effects on demand, since we have a sound control group available. The data suggest that pull-forward effects in 1996 accounted for up to one-fifth of the subsequent decrease in demand. Taking this anticipation effect into account, we show that the reform induced a decrease in total demand of about 20 percent. We estimate the price elasticity for rehabilitation programs that aim at preventing work incapacity to be about -0.15, whereas the elasticity for rehabilitation programs for recovery from work accidents lies ar...

Estimating Price Elasticities of Convalescent Care Programmes

“…I also present various models that exclude the year 1996, which is an alternative to the inclusion of DiD96 in columns (5) and (6) in Table 4. The results are almost identical (Ziebarth, 2009).…”

“…Second, this law, which became effective on October 1, 1996, also cut statutory sick pay for private‐sector employees from 100% to 80% of foregone gross wages 9 . In the working paper version of this article, I show that the net effect of all reform elements is of the same magnitude as the pure co‐payment effect and that the cut in paid vacation and sick pay had no significant effect on top of the co‐payment effect (Ziebarth, 2009). I have two explanations for this finding.…”

“…18 18 As explained in , SHI private sector employees were also affected by two other reforms, but these had no effect on the demand for convalescent care which I show in the working paper version. In the working paper, I also show by means of a graph that the incidence of convalescent care programmes for private sector employees with SHI and the incidence for subgroups (2) to (5) run parallel (Ziebarth, 2009). …”