Once bitten, twice shy? Lessons learned from an experiment to liberalize price regulations for dental care.

ABSTRACT: In 2012, The Netherlands established the so-called "free market experiment", which allowed providers of dental care to set the prices for their dental services themselves. The introduction of market mechanisms is intended to improve the quality of care and to contribute to cost containment, but increasing health expenditures for citizens have been observed in this context. Using large-volume health insurance claims data and exploiting the 2012 experiment in Dutch dental care, we identified the effects of a liberalization of service prices. Using pooled regression with individual fixed effects, we analyzed changes in utilization patterns of prevention-oriented dental services in response to the experiment as well as the elasticities in demand in response to variations in out-of-pocket (OOP)

SUBMITTER: Trescher AL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7188704 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature