The oral care market in France.

Summary This thesis focuses on the difficulties of access to dental care in the French semi-regulated market. The analysis focuses on the financial barrier to access to dental care and thus the role and mechanism of price setting. The first part allows us to contextualize the delivery of dental care in France and shows that the dental profession is particularly isolated in the French health field. The purpose of the second part is to identify the determinants of access to dental care. We show that the M'T'dents preventive program for children, which is entirely free of charge, was used only by the most affluent households and had little impact on the disadvantaged households that need it most. The importance of social support in access to care is also affirmed in our second empirical study. Primary access to adult dental care presents the main barrier to access. Once this difficulty is overcome, patients most often engage in the next necessary treatments, with expenditure levels that can be significant even for the less affluent. Following these results, we were specifically interested in the role of price. We showed that the higher the price of dental prostheses, the greater the renunciation of this care for financial reasons. According to our work, the intensity of competition has a negative impact on pricing, as opposed to the solvency of the demand. Prices between competitors are also strategic complements. These are all factors that could be regulated to combat the renunciation of dental care and the resulting social inequalities in health.