Helland at Missouri

3 March 2009 at 5:44 pm Michael Sykuta Leave a comment

| Mike Sykuta |

Eric Helland will be on campus this Friday, 6 March, to give a seminar on the effects of insurance reimbursement policies on the provision of medical services. In this paper, Helland and his co-author Paul Heaton compare the level and number of treatments recommended for auto-injury trauma patients in Colorado before and after a change in state law that shifted the burden from more generous auto-policy reimbursements to less generous, traditional health-insurance policies. Following the change, doctors recommended more reimbursable treatments per patient despite negligible changes in the character of auto injuries or in the health outcomes of those cases.

This is the latest in a stream of research Eric has done examining the (sometimes perverse) incentive systems created by different market and regulatory structures and the political economy of such outcomes, including issues of corporate governance (here), class-action lawsuits (here), and workings of the judicial system (here and here).

Eric’s talk is part of the Economics Department’s seminar series. If you are within driving distance, I’m sure you would find it worth your while.