Does Full Insurance Increase the Demand for Health Care?
利用准实验设计和面板数据，估计了全额保险对医疗支出的因果影响，发现与成本分摊模式相比，需求弹性约为-0.14，且产生医疗费用的概率显著上升。
We estimate the causal impact of having full health insurance on healthcare expenditures. We take advantage of a unique quasi-experimental setup in which deductibles and co-payments were zero in a managed care plan and nonzero in regular insurance, until a policy change forced all individuals with an active plan to cover a minimum amount of their expenses. Using panel data and a nonlinear difference-in-differences strategy, we find a demand elasticity of about -0.14 comparing full insurance with the cost-sharing model and a significant upward shift in the likelihood to generate costs. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.