Dataset Information

An investigation of health insurance policy and behavior in a virtual environment.

ABSTRACT: We introduce a new experimental approach to measuring the effects of health insurance policy alternatives on behavior and health outcomes over the life course. In a virtual environment with multi-period lives, subjects earn virtual income and allocate spending, to maximize utility, which is converted into cash payment. We compare behavior across age, income and insurance plans-one priced according to an individual's expected cost and the other uniformly priced through employer-implemented cost sharing. We find that 1) subjects in the employer-implemented plan purchased insurance at higher rates; 2) the employer-based plan reduced differences due to income and age; 3) subjects in the actuarial plan engaged in more health-promoting behaviors, but still below optimal levels, and did save at the level required, so did realize the full benefits of the plan. Subjects had more difficulty optimizing choices in the Actuarial treatment, because it required more long term planning and evaluating benefits that compounded over time. Contrary, to model predictions, the actuarial priced insurance plan did not increase utility relative to the employer-based plan.

SUBMITTER: Tracy JD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8023465 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

An investigation of health insurance policy and behavior in a virtual environment.

Tracy J Dustin JD James Kevin A KA Kaplan Hillard H Rassenti Stephen S

PloS one 20210406 4

We introduce a new experimental approach to measuring the effects of health insurance policy alternatives on behavior and health outcomes over the life course. In a virtual environment with multi-period lives, subjects earn virtual income and allocate spending, to maximize utility, which is converted into cash payment. We compare behavior across age, income and insurance plans-one priced according to an individual's expected cost and the other uniformly priced through employer-implemented cost s ...[more]

PMID: 33822805

Similar Datasets

Project description:Provider payment reforms, such as capitation, are very contentious. Such reforms can drop off the policy agenda due to political and contextual resistance. Using the Shiffman and Smith (Generation of political priority for global health initiatives: a framework and case study of maternal mortality. Lancet 2007; 370 1370-9) framework, this study explains why Ghana's National Health Insurance capitation payment policy that rose onto the policy agenda in 2012, dropped off the agenda in 2017 during its pilot implementation in the Ashanti region. We conducted a retrospective qualitative policy analysis by collecting field data in December 2019 in the Ashanti region through 18 interviews with regional and district level policy actors and four focus group discussions with community-level policy beneficiaries. The thematically analysed field data were triangulated with media reports on the policy. We discovered that technically framing capitation as a cost-containment strategy with less attention on portraying its health benefits resulted in a politically negative reframing of the policy as a strategy to punish fraudulent providers and opposition party electorates. At the level of policy actors, pilot implementation was constrained by a regional level anti-policy community, weak civil society mobilization and low trust in the then political leadership. Anti-policy campaigners drew on highly contentious and poorly implemented characteristics of the policy to demand cancellation of the policy. A change in government in 2017 created the needed political window for the suspension of the policy. While it was technically justified to pilot the policy in the stronghold of the main opposition party, this decision carried political risks. Other low- and middle-income countries considering capitation reforms should note that piloting potentially controversial policies such as capitation within a politically sensitive location can attract unanticipated partisan political interest in the policy. Such partisan interest can potentially lead to a decline in political attention for the policy in the event of a change in government.

Dataset Information

An investigation of health insurance policy and behavior in a virtual environment.

Publications

An investigation of health insurance policy and behavior in a virtual environment.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets