Shifted deductible in the dutch health insurance market. An effective measure to control healthcare costs?

ABSTRACT This study examines the implementation of a mandatory shifted deductible for extensive health care users in the Dutch health insurance scheme. With rapid increasing healthcare costs we are forced to seek new possibilities to control or even reduce this trend. With the current traditional deductible system extensive health care users do not have any incentive to prevent unnecessary health care costs and are exposed to moral hazard. The shifted deductible moves the traditional deductible to a higher starting level for extensive health care users. The cost saving potential of the shifted deductible is therefore high. The main goal of this study is to investigate the behavior of extensive health care users, will this group respond to the financial incentive of a shifted deductible? The collected data show that extensive health care users will respond to this financial incentive, though the effect is smaller than for healthy individuals with the traditional deductible.