Incentive contracts for gatekeepers who control patient access to specialist medical services provide too weak incentives to investigate cost further when expected cost of treatment is greater than benefit. Making gatekeepers residual claimants with a fixed fee from which treatment costs must be met (as with full insurers who are themselves gatekeepers) provides too strong incentives when expected cost is less than benefit. Giving patients the choice between a gatekeeper with an incentive contract and one without is unstable. With one scenario, patients always prefer the latter. With another, patients have incentives to acquire information that makes incentive contracts ineffective.
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Paper provided by University of Oxford, Department of Economics in its series Economics Series Working Papers with number
169.
Find related papers by JEL classification: I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
References listed on IDEAS Please 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.:
Cutler, David M. & Zeckhauser, Richard J., 2000.
"The anatomy of health insurance,"
Handbook of Health Economics,
in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 11, pages 563-643
Elsevier.
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Chalkley, Martin & Malcomson, James M., 2000.
"Government purchasing of health services,"
Handbook of Health Economics,
in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 15, pages 847-890
Elsevier.
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