Insurance – How They Shape Social Behavior | Northwestern Professor Carol Heimer

In this episode, we sit down with Professor Dr. Carol Heimer, a sociologist whose pioneering book Reactive Risk and Rational Action reshaped how scholars think about insurance, trust, and moral hazard. We chat about how concepts like moral hazard can affect consumers and physicians, and why insurance rules often lead to both overuse and underuse of care.Dr. Heimer offers a rare lens on the U.S. healthcare system, explaining how insurer rules and reimbursement policies can affect medical practice and change physician discretion. We also discuss her research on neonatal intensive care units, where she shows how financial incentives, hospital policies, and insurance decisions shape care for critically ill infants, leaving parents to navigate trade-offs between quality and coverage. We close with her reflections on how healthcare is fundamentally interdependent, and why rethinking who sets the rules could help us build a fairer, more functional system of care.See more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Heimer