Guest Editor’s Introduction to the Special Issue on Health and Consumer Finance

Health and consumer finance are hard to disentangle. Social and power structures in the imperfect health-care market favor suppliers and their regulators. The asymmetric control of resources and information by the industry renders consumers impotent in finding the optimum levels of medical goods and services; thus, transforming consumers into patients who only search for affordable healthcare. A critical outcome is the fact that about half of collection activities that are reported to the main credit agencies are related to medical bills owed to providers. However, in the health-care arena, consumer sovereignty is tethered by (a) the uncertainty about the nature and timing of the need for medical care; (b) reliance on providers’ credence rather than the goods and services; (c) the spiral bureaucracy and the captured regulators; and (d) the inherent moral and morale hazards in receiving, providing, financing and regulating health care. These tethers box a consumer as a patient and cause a simultaneous feedback between health and finance, which adversely impacts consumers’ long term well-being and financial standing in the economy