IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v105y2015i5p115-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring Consumer Valuation of Limited Provider Networks

Author

Listed:
  • Keith Marzilli Ericson
  • Amanda Starc

Abstract

We measure the breadth of insurance networks in the Massachusetts health insurance exchange. Using our measures, we estimate consumer willingness-to-pay for broad and narrow networks. We find that consumers have a wide range of plans available with dramatically different networks. While consumers value broader networks, their willingness-to-pay is smaller than the brand premium, indicating an additional role for brand preferences. Consumers place additional value on star hospitals, which may affect upstream negotiations. Finally, we find significant geographic heterogeneity in the value of broad networks.

Suggested Citation

  • Keith Marzilli Ericson & Amanda Starc, 2015. "Measuring Consumer Valuation of Limited Provider Networks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 115-119, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:105:y:2015:i:5:p:115-19
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20151082
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.p20151082
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/aer/ds/10505/P2015_1082_ds.zip
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Capps, Cory & Dranove, David & Satterthwaite, Mark, 2003. "Competition and Market Power in Option Demand Markets," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(4), pages 737-763, Winter.
    2. Jason Abaluck & Jonathan Gruber, 2011. "Choice Inconsistencies among the Elderly: Evidence from Plan Choice in the Medicare Part D Program," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1180-1210, June.
    3. Jonathan Gruber & Robin McKnight, 2016. "Controlling Health Care Costs through Limited Network Insurance Plans: Evidence from Massachusetts State Employees," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 219-250, May.
    4. Leemore Dafny & Jonathan Gruber & Christopher Ody, 2014. "More Insurers Lower Premiums: Evidence from Initial Pricing in the Health Insurance Marketplaces," NBER Working Papers 20140, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Amanda Starc, 2014. "Insurer pricing and consumer welfare: evidence from Medigap," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 45(1), pages 198-220, March.
    6. Katherine Ho, 2006. "The welfare effects of restricted hospital choice in the US medical care market," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(7), pages 1039-1079.
    7. Ericson, Keith M. Marzilli & Starc, Amanda, 2016. "How product standardization affects choice: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 71-85.
    8. Jason Abaluck & Jonathan Gruber, 2011. "Heterogeneity in Choice Inconsistencies among the Elderly: Evidence from Prescription Drug Plan Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 377-381, May.
    9. David M. Cutler & Mark McClellan & Joseph P. Newhouse, 2000. "How Does Managed Care Do It?," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 31(3), pages 526-548, Autumn.
    10. McClellan, Mark & Cutler, David & Newhous, Joseph P., 2000. "How Does Managed Care Do It?," Scholarly Articles 2643884, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ericson, Keith M. Marzilli & Starc, Amanda, 2016. "How product standardization affects choice: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 71-85.
    2. H. E. Frech & Peter Zweifel, 2017. "Market Socialism and Community Rating in Health Insurance," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 59(3), pages 405-427, September.
    3. Drake, Coleman, 2019. "What are consumers willing to pay for a broad network health plan?: Evidence from covered California," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 63-77.
    4. Stuart V. Craig & Keith Marzilli Ericson & Amanda Starc, 2018. "How Important Is Price Variation Between Health Insurers?," NBER Working Papers 25190, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Keaton S. Miller & Amil Petrin & Robert Town & Michael Chernew, 2019. "Optimal Managed Competition Subsidies," NBER Working Papers 25616, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Higuera, Lucas & Carlin, Caroline S. & Dowd, Bryan, 2018. "Narrow provider networks and willingness to pay for continuity of care and network breadth," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 90-97.
    7. Atwood, Alicia & Lo Sasso, Anthony T., 2016. "The effect of narrow provider networks on health care use," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 86-98.
    8. Leila Agha & Keith Marzilli Ericson & Kimberley H. Geissler & James B. Rebitzer, 2018. "Team Formation and Performance: Evidence from Healthcare Referral Networks," NBER Working Papers 24338, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martin Gaynor & Kate Ho & Robert J. Town, 2015. "The Industrial Organization of Health-Care Markets," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 53(2), pages 235-284, June.
    2. Gaynor, Martin & Town, Robert J., 2011. "Competition in Health Care Markets," Handbook of Health Economics, in: Mark V. Pauly & Thomas G. Mcguire & Pedro P. Barros (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 499-637, Elsevier.
    3. Kate Ho & Ariel Pakes, 2014. "Hospital Choices, Hospital Prices, and Financial Incentives to Physicians," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(12), pages 3841-3884, December.
    4. Drake, Coleman, 2019. "What are consumers willing to pay for a broad network health plan?: Evidence from covered California," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 63-77.
    5. Gautam Gowrisankaran & Aviv Nevo & Robert Town, 2015. "Mergers When Prices Are Negotiated: Evidence from the Hospital Industry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(1), pages 172-203, January.
    6. Mark Shepard, 2016. "Hospital Network Competition and Adverse Selection: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange," NBER Working Papers 22600, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Ericson, Keith M. Marzilli & Starc, Amanda, 2016. "How product standardization affects choice: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 71-85.
    8. Stuart V. Craig & Keith Marzilli Ericson & Amanda Starc, 2018. "How Important Is Price Variation Between Health Insurers?," NBER Working Papers 25190, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Wu, Vivian Y., 2009. "Managed care's price bargaining with hospitals," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 350-360, March.
    10. Keith Marzilli Ericson & Philipp Kircher & Johannes Spinnewijn & Amanda Starc, 2015. "Inferring Risk Perceptions and Preferences using Choice from Insurance Menus: Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 21797, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Chorniy, Anna & Miller, Daniel & Tang, Tilan, 2020. "Mergers in Medicare Part D: Assessing market power, cost efficiencies, and bargaining power," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    12. Determann, Domino & Lambooij, Mattijs S. & de Bekker-Grob, Esther W. & Hayen, Arthur P. & Varkevisser, Marco & Schut, Frederik T. & Wit, G. Ardine de, 2016. "What health plans do people prefer? The trade-off between premium and provider choice," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 10-18.
    13. Jaffe, Sonia & Shepard, Mark, 2017. "Price-Linked Subsidies and Health Insurance Markups," Working Paper Series rwp17-002, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    14. Boone, Jan, 2019. "Health provider networks with private contracts: Is there under-treatment in narrow networks?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    15. Atwood, Alicia & Lo Sasso, Anthony T., 2016. "The effect of narrow provider networks on health care use," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 86-98.
    16. repec:zbw:rwirep:0545 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Michael Geruso & Timothy J. Layton & Jacob Wallace, 2020. "Are All Managed Care Plans Created Equal? Evidence from Random Plan Assignment in Medicaid," NBER Working Papers 27762, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Keane, M.P. & Thorp, S., 2016. "Complex Decision Making," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 661-709, Elsevier.
    19. Kowalski, Amanda E., 2015. "Estimating the tradeoff between risk protection and moral hazard with a nonlinear budget set model of health insurance," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 122-135.
    20. Jason Abaluck & Mauricio Caceres Bravo & Peter Hull & Amanda Starc, 2020. "Mortality Effects and Choice Across Private Health Insurance Plans," Working Papers 2020-108, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    21. Bunnings, C,; & Schmitz, H,; & Tauchmann, H,; & Ziebarth, N.R,;, 2015. "How Health Plan Enrollees Value Prices Relative to Supplemental Benefits and Service Quality," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 15/02, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • I13 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Insurance, Public and Private

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:105:y:2015:i:5:p:115-19. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Michael P. Albert). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    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 CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service 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.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.