Healthcare Demand under Simple Prices: Evidence from Tiered Hospital Networks
研究发现，在分级医院网络的简单价格信息环境下，消费者会转向低价医院，三年内预期节省8-17%的基准支出，表明简化价格能有效引导医疗消费。
This paper shows that consumers respond to prices for complex healthcare when they can easily assess out-of-pocket prices. Healthcare cost containment efforts increasingly incentivize price shopping despite a dearth of evidence that this steers consumers toward lower-priced care for major medical services. I show that consumers shift toward lower-priced hospitals in the highly simplified price information environment of insurance plans with tiered hospital networks. Consumers observe a single predictable, well-defined price that applies to a broad range of services within each of at most three hospital tiers. Within three years, expected partial-equilibrium savings reach 8–17 percent of baseline spending.