[bobcostas55]

>Instead, both healthy and sick patients simply used way less health care.

>This raises a scary possibility: Perhaps higher deductibles don't lead to smarter shoppers but rather, in the long run, sicker patients.

Spot the leap. The author implicitly assumes health care usage/health care spending is correlated to health care outcomes, but there is _highly_ convincing evidence that that is not the case. So: has Sarah Kliff (senior editor, "Writing about health care.") never heard of the Oregon Medicaid health experiment, or is she just pretending it never happened?

Also the impossibility of price-shopping is obviously a huge problem.

[mikeyouse]

The Oregon Medicaid experiment was very interesting but clearly wasn't the definitive word on emergency use and outcomes, and as to whether Kliff had heard of it, here's one of many articles she's written on the subject;

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/03/ne...