Generous health insurance plans encourage overtreatment, but may not improve health

(Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Offering comprehensive health insurance plans with low deductibles and co-pay in exchange for higher annual premiums seems like a good value for the risk averse, and a profitable product for insurance companies. But according to a study in a leading scholarly marketing journal, the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, such plans can encourage individuals with chronic conditions to turn to needlessly expensive treatments that have litt...