Information Asymmetry, Insurance, and the Decision to Hospitalize
Abstract
We analyze the effects of various kinds of demand- and supply-side incentives in the context of a model in which patients and doctors must decide not only on an aggregate quantity of health services to use in treating various kinds of illness, but also have a choice between different kinds of providers (in particular, outpatient services rendered by primary-care physicians or inpatient services provided by hospital-based specialists). We consider well -informed patients’ choices of provider when they have conventional insurance so they only pay part of the cost of their health services, as well as the equilibrium strategies of doctors and patients when there is patient-provider asymmetry; in the latter case we also analyze a managed-care insurance setup under which doctors are paid by capitation. We find that under certain plausible conditions, second-best optimal managed-care plans dominate second -best optimal conventional plans that rely on cost control through demand-side cost sharing.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by National University of Singapore, Department of Economics in its series Departmental Working Papers with number wp0305.Length:
Date of creation: Jun 2003
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:nus:nusewp:wp0305
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/ecs/index.html
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords: Primary Care; Specialty Care; Hospitalization; Insurance; HMOs; Capitation; Asymmetric Information.;Other versions of this item:
- Blomqvist, Ake & Leger, Pierre Thomas, 2005. "Information asymmetry, insurance, and the decision to hospitalize," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 775-793, July.
- Åke Blomqvist & Pierre Thomas Léger, 2001. "Information Asymmetry, Insurance, and the Decision to Hospitalize," Cahiers de recherche 01-03, HEC Montréal, Institut d'économie appliquée.
- Åke Blomqvist & Pierre Thomas Léger, 2002. "Information Asymmetry, Insurance, and the Decision to Hospitalize," CIRANO Working Papers 2002s-06, CIRANO.
- I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Gravelle, Hugh & Dusheiko, Mark & Sutton, Matthew, 2002. "The demand for elective surgery in a public system: time and money prices in the UK National Health Service," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 423-449, May.
- Rochaix, Lise, 1989. "Information asymmetry and search in the market for physicians' services," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 53-84, March.
- Manning, Willard G, et al, 1987. "Health Insurance and the Demand for Medical Care: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(3), pages 251-77, June.
- Dranove, David, 1988. "Demand Inducement and the Physician/Patient Relationship," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 26(2), pages 281-98, April.
- Ma, Ching-to Albert & McGuire, Thomas G, 1997.
"Optimal Health Insurance and Provider Payment,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 87(4), pages 685-704, September.
- Ching-to Albert Ma & Thomas G. McGuire, 1995. "Optimal Health Insurance and Provider Payment," Papers 0059, Boston University - Industry Studies Programme.
- Pierre Thomas Léger, 2000. "Quality control mechanisms under capitation payment for medical services," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 33(2), pages 564-586, May.
- Marinoso, Begona Garcia & Jelovac, Izabela, 2003. "GPs' payment contracts and their referral practice," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 617-635, July.
- Glied, Sherry, 2000. "Managed care," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 707-753 Elsevier.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Kantarevic, Jasmin & Kralj, Boris, 2011. "Quality and Quantity in Primary Care Mixed Payment Models: Evidence from Family Health Organizations in Ontario," IZA Discussion Papers 5762, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
- Ake Blomqvist & Colin Busby, 2012. "How to Pay Family Doctors: Why "Pay per Patient" is Better Than Fee for Service," C.D. Howe Institute Commentary, C.D. Howe Institute, issue 365, October.
- Marie Allard & Izabela Jelovac & Pierre-Thomas Léger, 2011.
"Treatment and referral decisions under different physician payment mechanisms,"
Post-Print
halshs-00650933, HAL.
- Allard, Marie & Jelovac, Izabela & Léger, Pierre Thomas, 2011. "Treatment and referral decisions under different physician payment mechanisms," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 880-893.
- Michael Leung, 2010. "Primary care delivery, risk pooling and economic efficiency," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 161-175, April.
- David, Guy & Neuman, Mark D., 2011. "Physician division of labor and patient selection for outpatient procedures," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 381-391, March.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nus:nusewp:wp0305For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

