The pricing of medical products and services in the U.S. is notoriously complex. In health care, supply prices (those received by the manufacturer) are distinct from demand prices (those paid by the patient) due to health insurance. The insurer, in designing the benefit, decides what prices...

This paper is concerned with the economics of mental health. We argue that mental health economics is like health economics only more so: uncertainty and variation in treatments are greater; the assumption of patient self-interested behavior is more dubious; response to financial incentives such...

This chapter reviews topics related to the demand for health insurance, including the question of how choice of health insurance should be structured for consumers. After the first section summarizes some of the institutional features of health insurance in high- and middle-income countries, a...

Even with open enrollment and mandated purchase, incentives created by adverse selection may undermine the efficiency of service offerings by plans in the new health insurance Exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act. Using data on persons likely to participate in Exchanges drawn from five...

This paper re-examines the relation between the predictability of health care spending and incentives due to adverse selection. Within an explicit model of health plan decisions about service levels, we show that predictability (how well spending on certain services can be anticipated),...