Market Competition and Healthcare Policy

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 policymakers have consulted epidemiologists and economists to determine the best course of action.

Around 150 million Americans rely on employers for access to health care. Can the companies who employ them help foster an affordable system that improves our health and doesn't drive us crazy in the process?

Medicare beneficiaries frequently select suboptimal Medicare Advantage plan products or elect traditional fee-for-service Medicare due to choice paralysis, cognitive impairments, and consumer health insurance illiteracy. Medicare Advantage Chronic Condition Special Needs Plans (C-SNPs) offer an opportunity to tie disease to both plan design and marketing, simplifying consumer choice architecture.

Mario Macis, PhD of Carey Business School and member of HBHI’s Leadership Committee won a 2020 HBHI pilot grant on “Social Support for Markets in Health and Healthcare: Insights from the COVID-19 Pandemic.” His efforts produced a working paper which was disseminated in April 2022 by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) as well as two research networks in Germany.

Price surges often generate social disapproval and requests for regulation and price controls, but these interventions may cause inefficiencies and shortages. To study how individuals perceive and reason about sudden price increases for different products under different policy regimes, we conduct a survey experiment with Canadian and U.S. residents.

Facing unprecedented uncertainty and drastic trade-offs between public health and other forms of human well-being, policy makers during the Covid-19 pandemic have sought the guidance of epidemiologists and economists.

Medicare Advantage and the Maryland all-payer model