[dragonwriter]

Plans with a deductible "over $1,000" usually have deductibles well over $1,000, e.g. $3,000 to $6,000+, and only cover something like 20% costs after the deductible.

So, neglecting the annual limit, the $1,529 vs. $186,955 appendectomy situation wouldn't be $1,000 vs. $1,000, it would be more like (with $3,000 of unused deductible at the time of the procedure) $1,529 vs. $39,791.

[nkurz]

I was concentrating on the lousy logic expressed in the article rather than specific numbers in the study. I think my point stands, since the total cost for any appendectomy is almost certain to exceed any deductible.

As you point out, the real difference in costs (and the factors that actually might influence patient behavior) are the percentage of coverage after the deductible and the levels for out-of-pocket max. As you probably noticed, these weren't mentioned in the article.

I'd hope the actual paper has a better discussion of this, but it doesn't seem to be publicly available: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21632

One of the authors do have some summary slides available: http://eml.berkeley.edu/~bhandel/wp/BCHK.pdf

From Slide 8, it looks like the studied group had a 10% in-network copay, with a $6,250 out-of-pocket cap.