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Abstract

Vol. 53, No. 3, pp. 226-235 (2002)

“A Claim Data Analysis of Medical Fee Revision”
Tadahiko Tokita (Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University), Kei Hosoya (Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University), Yukinari Hayashi (Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University), Hisao Kumamoto (Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University)

We examine the economic effects of the medical fee revision introduced in Sept. 1997. Both the descriptive statistics and the simple econometric analyses, using the outpatients' claim data on one of major medical insurances for the employed, lead to the conclusion that the revision mainly affected behaviors of heads of households rather than those of dependents. Moreover, we show that this revision had a stronger influence on cases of chronic disease than on acute ones. Finally, we confirm that the revision did not affect any specific income class heavily. This suggests the possibility that the revision influenced all income classes equally.