Can Limiting Choice Increase Social Welfare? The Elderly and Health Insurance

Overview

Journal Milbank Q

Specialties Health Services
Public Health

Date 2006 Mar 15

PMID 16529568

Citations 22

Authors

Yaniv Hanoch

Thomas Rice

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Herbert Simon's work on bounded rationality has had little impact on health policy discourse, despite numerous supportive findings. This is particularly surprising in regard to the elderly, a group marked by a decline in higher cognitive functions. Elders' cognitive capacity to make decisions will be challenged even further with the introduction of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit program, mainly because of the many options available. At the same time, a growing body of evidence points to the perils of having too many choices. By combining research from decision science, economics, and psychology, we highlight the potential problems with the expanding health insurance choices facing the elderly and conclude with some policy suggestions to alleviate the problem.

Citing Articles

A scoping review of the impact of ageing on individual consumers' insurance purchase intentions.

Zheng Z, B A M H, Omar Zaki H, Tan Q Heliyon. 2024; 10(18):e37501.

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Too many cooks could spoil the broth: choice overload and the provision of ambulatory health care.

Herwartz H, Strumann C Int J Health Econ Manag. 2024; 24(3):357-373.

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Policy requirements in promoting older people health care in Iran: A qualitative study.

Bahmaei J, Ravangard R, Bahrami M, Asadollahi A, Bastani P J Educ Health Promot. 2023; 12:159.

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Improving Older Adults' Health by Reducing Administrative Burden.

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Comparative Usability Study of a Newly Created Patient-Centered Tool and Medicare.gov Plan Finder to Help Medicare Beneficiaries Choose Prescription Drug Plans.

Stults C, Fattahi S, Meehan A, Bundorf M, Chan A, Pun T J Patient Exp. 2019; 6(1):81-86.

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