There are inadequate consumer protections from harmful medical billing practices that result in unavoidable, unexpected, and often financially devastating medical bills. The problem stems from increasing cost shifting to patients underway in American health care and the inordinate complexity...

Consumers' health plan choices are highly persistent even though optimal plans change over time. This paper separates two sources of inertia, inattention to plan choice and switching costs. We develop a panel data model with separate attention and choice stages, linked by heterogeneity in...