Health Plan Choice: Implications for Consumers & Purcha

候选人研究议程的长期目标是确定如何最有效地设计在团购安排中相互竞争的健康计划之间的选择，以便为消费者提供并提供高质量、高价值的医疗保健。在这份研究职业奖励申请中，候选人确定短期（5年）的职业发展和研究目标，并描述一个综合的职业发展和研究计划，使她能够实现这些目标。职业发展活动包括三个新方法领域的正式培训、正式职业发展指导和与高级调查人员的研究合作。研究议程有以下三个具体目的：1)分析个人如何选择替代健康计划，重点关注管理式医疗计划的特点如何影响不同类型消费者的选择；2)检验依赖于竞争计划之间的选择的团购策略对消费者和购买者的成本和获得健康保险的影响，并确定购买群体内的个人组合如何影响这些结果；3)确定公共和私人购买者在目标和覆盖人群组成方面的差异如何影响团体健康保险购买安排的可行性和优化设计。为了分析健康计划中的个人选择，候选人将对个人选择行为进行计量经济学研究，重点关注老年人和近老年人。她还将使用另一种补充方法，即条件评估，来确定个人对健康计划特征的价值。申请人将通过开发健康保险购买群体的模拟模型和估计雇主购买策略决定因素的经验模型来探索团体购买策略的含义。

The long-term goal of the candidate's research agenda is to determine how choice among competing health plans within group purchasing arrangements can most effectively be designed to provide access to and deliver high quality, high-value health care to consumers. In this research career award application, the candidate identifies short-term (5-year) career development and research objectives leading toward that goal and describes an integrated career development and research plan that will enable her to achieve these objectives. Career development activities include formal training in three new methodological areas, formal career development mentoring, and research collaborations with senior investigators. The research agenda has the following three specific aims: 1) to analyze how individuals choose among alternative health plans, focusing on how characteristics of managed care plans influence the choices of different types of consumers; 2) to examine the effects of group purchasing strategies relying on choice among competing plans on cost and access to health insurance for consumers and purchasers, and to determine how the mix of individuals within a purchasing group affects these outcomes; and 3) to determine how differences between public and private purchasers in their objectives and the composition of their covered populations affect the feasibility and optimal design of group health insurance purchasing arrangements. To analyze individual choice among health plans, the candidate will conduct econometric studies of individual choice behavior, focusing on the elderly and near-elderly. She will also use an alternative, complementary methodology, contingent valuation, to determine the value individuals place on health plan characteristics. The applicant will explore the implications of group purchasing strategies by developing a simulation model of health insurance purchasing groups and estimating empirical models of the determinants of employer purchasing strategies.