#BELHP2014 Panel 2, Potential Problems and Limits of Nudges in Health Care

[Ed. Note: On Friday, May 2 and Saturday, May 3, 2014, the Petrie-Flom Center hosted its 2014 annual conference: “Behavioral Economics, Law, and Health Policy.”  This is an installment in our series of live blog posts from the event; video will be available later in the summer on our website.]

By Matthew L Baum

In this next installment of today’s live-blogging of the conference (and with all of the caveats of live-blogging mentioned by my colleagues and my apologies for any errors or misrepresentations) we have Professors David Hyman (DH), Mark White (MW) and Andrea Freeman (AF) in a panel moderated by Glenn Cohen (GC) on the “Potential Problems and Limits of Nudges in Health Care”.

The panel began with DH, H. Ross & Helen Workman Chair in Law and Director of the Epstein Program in Health Law and Policy, University of Illinois College of Law, and a talk entitled, “what can PPACA teach us about behavioral law and economics” (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act). DH began with the observation that nudges often work quite well… “unless they don’t”. While many nudges are “sticky”, i.e. they influence behavior in the way they were intended, others are “slippery”, i.e. they fail to influence behavior in the way they were intended. His talk set out to illustrate the phenomenon, and to pose two questions. The first was an empirical question: what makes a nudge sticky vs slippery? The second was philosophical: is it meaningful to talk about a “failed nudge” or when we do, do we really just mean failed marketing? He focused on an analysis of PPACA as a case study.

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