What Is the Price Elasticity of Demand for the H1N1 Vaccine?

Ms. Eclectic and I lined up with hundreds of other local residents last Monday when the county health authority came to town to provide swine flu shots for us. It was windy, cold, and there was mix of rain and snow blowing as we stood outside the Legion Hall, waiting to join the queue inside the hall.

Overall, people were in good spirits, and the organization was pretty slick. Nevertheless, the wait (especially when we were in the portion of the queue that was outside the building) was uncomfortable. From the time we arrived until the time we left, the total elapsed time was about an hour and a quarter, in contrast with about twenty minutes earlier in the fall when we received our seasonal flu shots. [note: both times included about a ten-minute waiting period following the shot].

As I proceeded from health bureaucrat to health bureaucrat at the H1N1 vaccination site, I asked each of them how long they thought the line would be if people were charged $5 each for the vaccine. Everyone I spoke with volunteered that they thought the line would be much shorter. The implication from this non-scientific survey is that the price elasticity of demand for the H1N1 vaccine is certainly greater than zero. Using arc elasticity calculations and rough guesstimates of the sizes, and supposing that charging $5 for the vaccine would reduce the quantity demanded from 2000 to 1500, then the price elasticity of demand would be approximately .143.

That's still a pretty small number, indicating that the quantity demanded would not be very responsive, in percentage terms, to a change in the price in this region. Nevertheless if 500 people (I know, it's a very rough guess) would give the vaccination a miss just because of a $5 charge, it is difficult to see how the vaccination can be thought of as a dire necessity.

Two additional notes:

1. Most of the health bureaucrats I spoke with didn't twig to the fact that I was asking about how much the quantity demanded would decline with the charge. They just thought that people receiving the vaccine ought to contribute to the costs of producing and providing the vaccinations. I don't have the numbers, but judging from the numbers of computers and health professionals involved, I suspect the cost of delivering the vaccinations was greater than the cost of producing the vaccine itself.
2. While receiving my vaccination, I overhear Ms. Eclectic say, "That's my husband. He turns everything into an economics question."

Comments

[Phil]

Our clinic, which was for kids only, started with a queue approximately 1500 feet long to the door. We were about in the middle and it took us 1.25 hours from start to finish. Ours was the Saturday before Thanksgiving which could have been dead-dog cold. Luckily it was a pleasant day, but I would rather have paid $10 for each kid and gone when it was convenient for us.

[Jeff H]

@ Ms. Eclectic. Agreed

@ Professor Palmer.
Would the health care system benefit from not having to treat people that got the shot?

Say for example it cost 500$ to treat someone infected with H1N1, but only 5$ to vaccinate them early on. Even if the infection rate was 1/50 or something similar, it would be a wise investment on the governments part to provide the free shots.

I think of it as cheap preventative medicine.

By the way I stood inline for a good hour 2 weeks ago to get the shot, and it was well worth the peace of mind.

[Scoop]

Can we work in the extra costs of the hue and cry there would be from the sacred cow crowd if there was a charge? Or would that just be a cost to be bourne outside the field of health care professionals?