9
Summary
The Swedish Social Insurance Inspectorate (Inspektionen för
socialförsäkringen, ISF) is an independent supervisory agency for
the Swedish social insurance system. The objectives of the agency
are to strengthen compliance with legislation and other statutes, and
to improve the efficiency of the social insurance system through
system supervision and efficiency analysis and evaluation.
The ISF’s work is mainly conducted on a project basis and is
commissioned by the Government or initiated autonomously by the
agency. This report has been initiated autonomously by the agency.
This report analyzes the effect of competition on prices on the market
for dental care in Sweden. It is a short version of the working paper
Price competition in health care: An empirical analysis of the
Swedish dental care
(Chirico 2013).
Dental care in Sweden is provided through both private clinics and
the Swedish Public Dental Service, which is the county councils’
dental care organization. The majority (60–80%) of dental care for
individuals aged 20 and above is supplied by private clinics. Patients
can freely choose either public or private clinics and price setting is
free.
This report adds to the understanding of the Swedish market for
dental care by being the first to empirically analyze the effect of
competition on prices. It also adds to the existing literature on
competition in health care more generally, by suggesting an empirical
framework to assess the causal effect of competition on prices.
The empirical strategy exploits that competition – theoretically – has
different effects across service types due to differences in consumers’
price sensitivity. More precisely, competition has greater effects on
informative services, such as examinations and diagnostics, compared
