John A. Nyman, PhD

I am an economist specializing in health and healthcare issues. Although I have worked in the area of nursing home policy and physician behavior in the past, my recent work has focused mainly on health insurance theory, cost-effectiveness analysis, with an occasional paper on why people gamble recreationally.

With regard to health insurance, I have developed a theory that suggests that people purchase health insurance to obtain additional income when ill, rather than to avoid risk, the conventional theory. This theory implies that moral hazard — the additional healthcare consumed because of insurance — is largely efficient and represents an important reason why people purchase health insurance.