By Sarah Goodell, M.A. and Katherine Swartz, Ph.D.
The Synthesis Project
Harvard School of Public Health
Publisher: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Published: December 2010
This brief examines how cost-sharing affects the use of services, whether some patients are more sensitive to cost-sharing than others, and whether reduced use of services as a result of cost-sharing has an effect on health outcomes. All of these issues factor into whether and how cost-sharing could be used to reduce the rate of growth of health care spending.