Health Plan Choice: Implications for Consumers & Purcha

候选人的研究议程的长期目标是确定如何在集团采购安排中的竞争性健康计划中进行选择，以最有效地设计为消费者提供高质量，高价值的医疗保健。在此研究职业奖励申请中，候选人确定了实现该目标的短期（5年）职业发展和研究目标，并描述了使她能够实现这些目标的综合职业发展和研究计划。职业发展活动包括三个新方法领域的正式培训、正式职业发展辅导以及与高级调查员的研究合作。本研究的主要目的有三：1）分析个人如何选择不同的健康计划，重点是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）研究依赖于在竞争计划中选择的团体购买策略对消费者和购买者的成本和获得健康保险的影响，并确定购买群体中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其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最佳设计。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，重点是老年人和近老年人。她还将使用一种替代的补充方法，即条件估值，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的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.