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Information and Consumer Choice: The Value of Publicized Health Plan Ratings

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  • Ginger Zhe Jin
  • Alan T. Sorensen
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    Abstract

    We use data on the enrollment decisions of federal annuitants to estimate the influence of publicized ratings on health plan choice. We focus on the impact of ratings disseminated by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), and use our estimates to calculate the value of the information. Our approach exploits a novel feature of the data%u2014the availability of nonpublic plan ratings%u2014to correct for a source of bias that is inherent in studies of consumer responsiveness to information on product quality: since publicized ratings are correlated with other quality signals known to consumers (but unobserved by researchers), the estimated influence of ratings is likely to be overstated. We control for this bias by comparing the estimated impact of publicized ratings to the estimated impact of ratings that were never disclosed. The results indicate that NCQA%u2019s plan ratings had a meaningful influence on individuals%u2019 choices, particularly for individuals choosing a plan for the first time. Although we estimate that a very small fraction of individual decisions were materially affected by the information, for those that were affected the implied utility gains are substantial.

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    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 11514.

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    Date of creation: Aug 2005
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    Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11514

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    1. Grossman, Sanford J, 1981. "The Informational Role of Warranties and Private Disclosure about Product Quality," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 461-83, December.
    2. Scanlon, Dennis P. & Chernew, Michael & McLaughlin, Catherine & Solon, Gary, 2002. "The impact of health plan report cards on managed care enrollment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 19-41, January.
    3. Paul R. Milgrom, 1979. "Good Nevs and Bad News: Representation Theorems and Applications," Discussion Papers 407R, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    4. Boyan Jovanovic, 1982. "Truthful Disclosure of Information," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(1), pages 36-44, Spring.
    5. Beaulieu, Nancy Dean, 2002. "Quality information and consumer health plan choices," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 43-63, January.
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    Cited by:
    1. Bundorf, M. Kate & Chun, Natalie & Goda, Gopi Shah & Kessler, Daniel P., 2009. "Do markets respond to quality information? The case of fertility clinics," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 718-727, May.
    2. Wang, Justin & Hockenberry, Jason & Chou, Shin-Yi & Yang, Muzhe, 2011. "Do bad report cards have consequences? Impacts of publicly reported provider quality information on the CABG market in Pennsylvania," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 392-407, March.
    3. Sridhar Narayanan & Pradeep Chintagunta & Eugenio Miravete, 2007. "The role of self selection, usage uncertainty and learning in the demand for local telephone service," Quantitative Marketing and Economics, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-34, March.
    4. M. Bundorf & Jonathan Levin & Neale Mahoney, 2008. "Pricing and Welfare in Health Plan Choice," Discussion Papers 07-047, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

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