Co-payments in the Austrian social health insurance system. Analysing patient behaviour and patients' views on the effects of co-payments.

Austrian health politicians constantly claim that patients have to be the focus of interest when providing health care services. However, due to increasing demand, scarce resources and insufficient guidance for health care provision at the national level, Austrian patients have been confronted with a variety of health care reforms during recent years. These reforms include the introduction of additional, mainly lump sum co-payments and the increase of existing (lump sum) co-payments. Using a sample of 378 socially-insured patients, the aim of this study is to analyse patients' attitudes towards co-payments, their views on the effects of co-payments on health care demand and their actual behaviour in response to co-payments. The study is descriptive rather than hypothesis testing due to the limited data. The results of this survey indicate that co-payments have no major guiding effect on health care demand. This is confirmed by what the patients indicate as regards their actual behaviour.