title: Health plan report cards and insurance choice.
abstract: This paper examines the relationship between consumers' health plan choices and health plan performance ratings. We make use of an initiative at a large firm to collect, aggregate, and disseminate to employees plan performance ratings. We estimate several statistical models, including share equations--which allow for the presence of important unobserved plan attributes--and logit models. Although report card ratings appear to be related to enrollment choices, the relationship is not uniform. For some dimensions of performance, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that employees respond to the performance ratings. For other dimensions, the ratings seem less influential than other plan attributes that employees likely observed without the data release.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Management and Policy, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109-2029, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chernew
authors.forename: D P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Scanlon
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003132:Commerce / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006264:Health Benefit Plans, Employee / Q000191:economics / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006284:Health Plan Implementation / Q000191:economics / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D007342:Insurance Benefits / Q000191:economics / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016018:Least-Squares Analysis; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008329:Managed Care Programs / Q000191:economics / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017059:Models, Econometric; D016017:Odds Ratio; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D015397:Program Evaluation / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D014481:United States