Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 920/832-6590
For Immediate Release                                      
Jan. 10, 2000

Public Health Researcher Challenges Insurance Industry's View of "Moral
Hazard" in Lawrence University Lecture 


     APPLETON, WIS. -- Professor John Nyman, a specialist in health
services research at the University of Minnesota's School of Public
Health, will challenge the traditional view of the dangers of "moral
hazard" by the health insurance industry in a Lawrence University
biomedical ethics and economics club lecture.
     Nyman, a 1970 Lawrence graduate, returns to campus to present the
address, "Health Insurance, Moral Hazard and Social Welfare:  A New
View," Thursday, Jan. 20 at 7:30 p.m. in Youngchild Hall, Room 161.
The lecture is free and open to the public.  
     Moral hazard -- an insurance industry term that refers to the
increased use of health care by people when they're insured as opposed
to when they're uninsured -- has traditionally been viewed by economists
as bad for society because it represents consumption whose value is less
than what it costs society to produce it.  As a result of that view,
policies are often recommended and implemented that aim to reduce health
insurance coverage.   
             Nyman contends this view is flawed because most of moral hazard is
caused by transfers of income from the healthy to the ill.  These
transfers benefit society Nyman argues, because the actual net costs of
moral hazard are at worst relatively small and at best may even
represent a net gain for society.
     The author of more than 50 published articles on health care
related issues, Nyman joined the University of Minnesota's School of
Public Health in 1988.  He earned his Ph.D. in economics at the
University of Wisconsin.