This paper studies employer incentives in designing health insurance provider networks and whether observed offerings reflect preferences that are aligned with employees. I estimate a model of supply and demand where I endogenize employer health plan offerings with respect to hospital and physician networks. I find that employers “overprovide” broad networks by overweighting the preferences of certain employees, specifically older workers and those in regions with less provider competition, over the preferences of the average employee household. Shifting employers toward offering different provider networks in different geographic markets could yield substantial gains to surplus, with minimal distributional or selection effects. (JEL G22, G28, I13, J32, M52)

中文翻译：

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健康保险设计中的雇主激励和扭曲：对福利和成本的影响

本文研究了雇主在设计健康保险提供商网络时的激励措施，以及观察到的产品是否反映了与员工一致的偏好。我估计了一个供需模型，其中我将与医院和医生网络相关的雇主健康计划产品内生化。我发现，雇主“过度提供”广泛的网络，将某些员工的偏好，特别是老年员工和供应商竞争较少的地区的员工，置于普通员工家庭的偏好之上。将雇主转向在不同地理市场提供不同的供应商网络可能会产生可观的盈余收益，而分配或选择影响最小。(JEL G22, G28, I13, J32, M52)