Rational Behavior in the Presence of Coverage Ceilings and Deductibles
研究消费者在面对免赔额、共付额和报销上限等保险条款时，如何理性地根据年内预期最终价格做出当前医疗消费决策，并证明该预期价格接近真实影子价格，可用于计量分析。
Consumers of health care services with insurance plan features such as deductibles, copayments, and coverage ceilings, in which the price of health care depends upon expenditures accumulated during a single year, should rationally anticipate the impact of current consumption decisions on the price of health care later in the year. We show that in the absence of wealth effects and risk aversion, a utility-maximizing consumer should base current consumption decisions on the expected end-of-year price of health care. In a specific model with risk aversion and lumpy consumption decisions we show that the expected end-of-year price remains close to the true shadow price of health care for plausible insurance plan and demand parameters. We use this result in an econometric model of the demand for ambulatory mental health services.