Prices set by fee-for-service Medicare have a direct effect on prices paid by private insurers throughout the health care system. While this link is widely recognized, there is disagreement about whether higher Medicare prices lead to lower or higher prices for private health insurance. We...

Publicly subsidized private health insurance markets in the United States were created under the assumption that competition would maximize consumer welfare. However, consumers in these markets are willing to pay thousands of dollars to stay in the same health plan, even after accounting for...

This paper considers some design features of a health care reform proposal that would make a government-run health insurance plan available to all. The details of any health care reform proposal are important, and the details of this proposal still are under development. However, some details...

Conventional theory holds that moral hazard - the additional health care purchased as a result of becoming insured - is an opportunistic price response and is welfare-decreasing because the value of the additional health care purchased is less than its costs. The theory of the demand for health...

Expected utility theory holds that the demand for insurance is a demand for certainty, because under the conventional specification of the theory, it appears as if buyers of insurance prefer certain losses to actuarially equivalent uncertain ones. Empirical studies, however, show that...