| The focus of this dissertation is the use of microeconometric methods to explore behavior in Canadian healthcare systems. Understanding this behavior is an essential pre-requisite to the implementation of effective policies to optimize health given budget constraints. The dissertation hones in on two issues which are of considerable importance: first, how physicians respond to changes in the prices they are paid for different services, and second, how immigrants' health evolves over the years following immigration.;Chapter 3 uses the comprehensive nature of physician claims data and exogenous variations from a government determined fee schedule to estimate the effect of service fees on the number of services provided. The scarcity of physician labor supply has been a difficult issue for policy makers to resolve. Fees for physician services have been used to encourage physicians to supply more of their services. However, there is little consensus in the literature on how physicians respond to fee increases. The estimated model shows that physicians supply more services as their fees increase. The positive response to a fee increase is found for all physician specialties, but the size of the response differs across specialties.;Chapter-1 takes advantage of longitudinal data to estimate the association between immigrant status and individual rate changes in health, while controlling both for survey attrition, and for time-variant and time-invariant observables. Immigrants initially entering a host country tend to have a health advantage over native residents that diminishes over time. Most estimates, however, measure the disappearance of immigrants' health advantage using cross-sectional data. The estimates with longitudinal data suggest that immigrants' health advantage deteriorates over time only for their perceived health. Immigrants' health, measured in number of chronic conditions and BMI, do not follow the same steep increase over time. Thus, the findings suggest that immigrants maintain their health advantage over native residents over time.;Chapter 2 uses physician claims data to estimate the effect of relative fees on physicians' choice of services. Changes to physician fees may affect the types of services they provide, which in turn, may influence patient care and government expenditures. These are key concerns for policy makers deciding future health care budgets and fee changes in Fee-For-Service (FFS) systems. Benefits of the data include exogenous fee schedule changes, and the universe of physicians and services claimed in a single-payer, public health care system. The estimated model suggests that physicians substitute to services with increasing relative fees. There is significant difference in response to relative fees across physician specialties. General Practice is the least fee elastic while Dermatology is the most fee elastic. Thus, policy makers should consider the effect on type of services provided when adjusting the fee schedule. |
