Expenditure on physicians' services in Canada: was Medicare a structural change?

This paper uses cointegration analysis to investigate the question of whether the introduction of national health insurance for physicians' services (Medicare) in the late 1960s caused a structural change in the relation driving national expenditure on physicians' services in Canada. The results support the existence of a single cointegration equation applying to both the Medicare and pre-Medicare periods. Structural change tests do not support the presence of a fundamental structural change associated with the introduction of Medicare.