Yes, People Shop for Health care. But are they Good at it? We used to hear “no one shops for health care.” But we know that not to be true; here’s a blog post I wrote about how people are doing just that. So, now that we know they do shop, do they do it well? That’s a good question too.
A recent study from some Berkeley economists found that people on high deductible plans don’t shop well. Sarah Kliff, writing about it in Vox, says the study “shows that when faced with a higher deductible, patients did not price shop for a better deal. Instead, both healthy and sick patients simply used way less health care.” I read the paper, by Zarek C. Brot-Goldberg, Amitabh Chandra, Benjamin R. Handel and Jonathan T. Kolstad, and had some questions and thoughts: First,