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Assessing the impact of high deductible health plans on health-care utilization and cost: a changes-in-changes approach
Health Economics, 06/08/2011
Borah BJ et al. – The authors find that both the a generalized version of the standard and changes–in–changes models yielded similar results, while the quantile difference–in–differences (QDID) model provided additional insights on the high deductible health plan (HDHP) impact across different parts of the outcome distributions. Overall, introduction of HDHP had no impact on health–care costs, positive impact on the number of outpatient visits and mixed impacts on the inpatient and emergency room visit counts. The QDID estimates suggest HDHP introduction generally impacted subjects in upper percentiles (50th, 75th and 90th).
