Unmet health care and health care utilization.
The objective of this study is to examine the causal effect of health care utilization on unmet health care needs. An IV approach deals with the endogeneity between the use of health care services and unmet health care, using the presence of drug insurance and the number of physicians by health region as instruments. We employ three cycles of the Canadian Community Health Survey confidential master files (2003, 2005, and 2014). We find a robustly negative relationship between health care use and unmet health care needs. One more visit to a medical doctor on average decreases the probability of reporting unmet health care needs by 0.014 points. The effect is negative for the women-only group whereas it is statistically insignificant for men; similarly, the effect is negative for urban dwellers but insignificant for rural ones. Health care use reduces the likelihood of reporting unmet health care. Policies that encourage the use of health care services, like increasing the coverage of public drug insurance and increasing after hours accessibility of physicians, can help reduce the likelihood of unmet health care.
['Bataineh|Hana|H|', 'Devlin|Rose Anne|RA|0000-0002-1386-4700', 'Barham|Vicky|V|']
D000328:Adult D000368:Aged D002170:Canada D005260:Female D015438:Health Behavior D006297:Health Services Accessibility D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand D006801:Humans D019458:Insurance Coverage D007356:Insurance, Pharmaceutical Services D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D015233:Models, Statistical D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care D010820:Physicians D012959:Socioeconomic Factors
unmet health care health care utilization Canada instrumental variables