Hey there. If you heard our first episode, you know, I'm trying to figure out what

health insurance my family can get for next year and we're lucky. One way or another

we're gonna be able to get some kind of health insurance plan. But according to this study I just read, we're probably

going to pick the wrong one. Picking the right one is so hard that the economist who did the study I read he says he's in the same boat

his son is turning 26 this year and can't stay on the family plan

Dad the economist will pick the new one. And...

Despite doing research on this, I'm truly dreading having to make this decision.

I have no confidence that I'm going to end up making the right decision.

That gloomy outlook comes from George Loewenstein. He's a professor at Carnegie Mellon.

And here is the story of how he and a couple of colleagues

figured out exactly how screwed we are. Oh wait first I did find a glimmer of hope

at the end so stay with me. This is an arm and a leg, a show about the cost of health care.

I'm Dan Weissman. A few years ago, George was doing some consulting work for a big company and...

I can't remember how it came about, but somehow it became clear that they would be willing

to give me access to their employees health insurance choices.

When you're an economist, this is like realizing that your client would be willing to give you

access to a bunch of tickets to Hamilton or something because this is a big company.

George can't tell me which one, but it has tens of thousands of employees.

So getting this data was a chance to observe a lot of people making big real life

economic choices. He was like you bet but at first. Well I wasn't really sure what to do with the data. He started brainstorming with a colleague.

I got a list of the plans that the employees were eligible to choose between just a table of the different plans.

There were 48 different plans, different deductibles, different premiums, different co-pays, percentages,

...