Read on Twitter
It's open enrollment season for health insurance. Every year, I try to write a piece to give people advice about how to shop for health insurance. Here's this year's version: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/upshot/health-insurance-signup-guide.html
One year, my editors hired an illustrator to make a fun visual guide to this unfun task. That one is my favorite how-to-pick-health-insurance article I have written. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/upshot/need-to-pick-an-insurance-plan-start-here.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
It's not just editors: Because I know a little bit about health insurance, I frequently get calls and emails from friends who want advice about which plan to pick from the marketplace or employer offerings. Every time, I try. But it's really hard.
Turns out, it's hard for everyone. Economists have been studying how people pick plans for decades. And study after study shows they are really bad at it. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/upshot/choosing-health-insurance-is-hard.html
Research shows that people are bad at picking the best Medicare drug plan. They are bad at picking the best Medicare Advantage Plan. They are bad at picking the best employer plan. If you ask them to design-their-own plan, they design terrible plans. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/upshot/choosing-health-insurance-is-hard.html
Guess who else finds picking the best health insurance plan difficult? Nobel-winning economist @paulkrugman https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/upshot/choosing-health-insurance-is-hard.html
... and people who study plan selection for a living. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/upshot/choosing-health-insurance-is-hard.html
New research shows that even most insurance brokers--people who help people pick plans for a living--pick bad plans. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/upshot/choosing-health-insurance-is-hard.html
Health insurance is a very hard product to shop for. It has a complicated financial design, with premiums, deductibles, copayments, etc. But choosing right also requires you to predict what might happen to your health. Most people can't do that well. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/upshot/choosing-health-insurance-is-hard.html
That study about brokers had some good news in it: If you give the brokers access to a computer algorithm that can do these things, they pick much better plans. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/upshot/choosing-health-insurance-is-hard.html
But here's a more depressing study: Everyone is bad at picking plans, but it appears that people who are poor and have lower education are the worst at it. That suggests that a plan-choice system could worsen inequality. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/upshot/choosing-health-insurance-is-hard.html
(The above study is about Dutch, not Danish health insurance. But there is a link in the article to a study about Danish mortgage refinancing!)
