Co-insurance and health care utilization in Japanese patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a discontinuity regression approach.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Co-insurance rates in Japan decrease when patients turn 70 years of age. We aim to compare changes in medical demand for Japanese patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) at age 70 prior to 2014, when there was a reduction in co-insurance rates from 30 to 10%, with changes in medical demand at age 70 after 2014 when co-insurance rates decreased from 30% to only 20%.

Methods

We used administrative data from large Japanese hospitals. We employed a discontinuity regression (RD) approach to control for unobserved endogeneity in the data.

Results

We identified a total of 7343 patients with RA, 4905 (67%) turned age 70 before April, and found that a 20% decrease in co-insurance was associated with increased utilization of more expensive biologic RA drugs, more out

SUBMITTER: Mahlich J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6350300 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature