Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/150759 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research No. 212
Publisher: 
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin
Abstract: 
This 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 (e6.14) to DM 25 (e12.78) 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 around -0.30. In contrast, the price elasticity for treatment at health spas is elastic and lies between -1 and -2.5.
Subjects: 
Convalescent care
health spa
medical rehabilitation
price elasticities
SOEP
JEL: 
H51
I1
I18
J22
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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