| 英文摘要: | The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act introduced the health insurance marketplaces, new online clearinghouses for buying and selling insurance. One of the benefits of the marketplaces is that they enable consumers to compare a variety of health insurance plans, and, ideally, select the plan that best suits their needs. However, the task of selecting a health insurance plan can be complicated because of such factors as difficulty understanding health insurance jargon, poor numeracy, inadequate decision-support tools, and an excessive number of choices. For this report, RAND researchers reviewed the literature on health insurance choice to understand how consumers make decisions and the extent to which confusion, lack of information, and other factors can hinder decisionmaking. They also reviewed literature on how to design websites to support consumers' choices and, where possible, gleaned best practices from the literature. They then reviewed 20 health insurance websites to understand the approaches these websites have taken to convey information to consumers. They found that existing health insurance websites follow some recommended practices, such as allowing consumers to sort and filter plans based on key characteristics. However, websites were lacking in other dimensions, such as in the use of out-of-pocket cost calculators, presentation of information on provider networks, and presentation of information about plan quality. Although, ideally, websites would convey such information to consumers, that might not be possible or desirable without better data. Future analyses should consider how alternative web design strategies affect actual choices among consumers enrolling in marketplace plans. |