The great American health care debate: A classroom game to explore risk and insurance

Health insurance policy is a current topic of concern for the United States. The classroom game discussed here provides students with a thorough understanding of some of the policy options under debate, in addition to demonstrating the classic problem of adverse selection. Students received probabilities of encountering a variety of medical expenses, based on their randomly assigned fictitious person’s age and health status. In each round, students made insurance decisions and then rolled dice to determine outcomes for each possible medical expense. The experiment considered insurance with an individual mandate, insurance without an individual mandate, insurance where students could purchase à la carte coverage mimicking proposed insurance riders for certain coverage, and insurance where pre-existing conditions were not covered.