| Abstract: |
We estimate the impact of health insurance coverage beyond National Health
Insurance on the demand for several health services. Traditionally, the
literature has tried to deal with the endogeneity of the private (extra)
insurance decision by finding instrumental variables. Since a priori
instrumental variables are hard to find we take a different approach. We focus
on the most common health insurance plan in Portugal, ADSE, which is given to
all civil servants and their dependants. We argue this insurance is exogenous
i.e. not correlated with beneficiaries’ health status. This identifying
assumption allows us to estimate the impact of having ADSE coverage on three
different health services using a matching estimator technique. The health
services used are: number of visits, number of blood and urine tests, and the
probability of visiting a dentist. Results show large positive effects of ADSE
for number of visits and tests among the young (18 to 30 years old) but only
the latter is statistically significantly different from zero. The effects
represent 21.8 and 30% of the average number of visits and tests for the
young. On the contrary, we find no evidence of moral hazard on the probability
of visiting a dentist. |