The principle of indemnity is well-accepted in the field of insurance and is also commonly assumed in the literature of optimal contract design. However, should this principle be imposed on all insurance contracts without exceptions? Does there exist an insurance contract that is optimal for both the insurer and the insured even as the principle of indemnity is violated? The answer is yes. This...

Why do indemnity insurance plans cost substantially more per capita--77% more in our study--than HMOs? We answer this question using data from a large organization's insurance pool, covering 215,000 lives. We decompose cost differences for eight major medical conditions into four sources: demographics, incidence within demographic groups, treatment intensity, and prices per service. Greater inc...

PURPOSE Malpractice premiums have increased by up to 57% for urologists in the last 3 years, for which the reasons are not clearly reported. We sought to better understand factors contributing to the current medical malpractice crisis in urology. MATERIALS AND METHODS Working with the Medical Liability Mutual Insurance Company of New York State we evaluated malpractice claims in urology that ...

Abstract: In problems of optimal insurance design, Arrow’s classical result on the optimality of the deductible indemnity schedule holds in a situation where the insurer is a risk-neutral Expected-Utility (EU) maximizer, the insured is a risk-averse EU-maximizer, and the two parties share the same probabilistic beliefs about the realizations of the underlying insurable loss. Recently, Ghossoub ...