Family Spillover Effects of Marginal Diagnoses: The Case of ADHD
研究发现，医疗系统依赖家族病史会放大低价值医疗的错配，以ADHD为例，一个边缘诊断会通过遗传信息在亲属间传播，形成“雪球效应”，增加低价值医疗的私人和社会成本。
The health care system uses patient family medical history in many settings, and this practice is widely believed to improve the efficiency of health care allocation. This paper provides a counterpoint by documenting that reliance on hereditary information can amplify the misallocation of low-value care. We study Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and show that reliance on family medical history generates a “snowball effect”—the propagation of an original marginal diagnosis to a patient’s relatives. This snowball effect raises the private and social costs of low-value care.