Does It Pay to Know Prices in Health Care?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Lieber, Ethan M. J.
• 署名单位: University of Notre Dame
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20150124
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 154-179
• 关键词: UNITED-STATES; search costs; moral hazard; insurance; TRANSPARENCY; COMPETITION; services; MARKET; distributions; association

摘要

Consumers rarely know the price of medical care before they consume it. I use variation in the timing of access to a new source of price information to show how access to and search for price information leads consumers to pay significantly less for care. I provide suggestive evidence that insurance coverage inhibits the use of price information, rationalizing the relatively low rates of search. The results indicate that availability of price information could have large impacts on prices even in the absence of general equilibrium effects.