How price transparency, AI, and cross-border care reveal why patients struggle to shop for healthcare in the U.S.
In this episode, Roy Bejarano speaks with Prof. Kelli Frias about healthcare pricing, consumer behavior, affordability, access, and why shopping for care is still so difficult for American patients. Kelli explains why more information does not always lead to better decisions, how patients use quality cues differently across markets, and what U.S. healthcare can learn from cross-border care in Mexico. The conversation also covers deductibles, delayed care, GLP-1s, AI-enabled patient decision-making, family caregiving, and why accessibility may matter as much as price transparency in shaping the future of consumer healthcare.

What You’ll Learn
✅ Why insured Americans are being pushed to shop for healthcare
✅ How deductibles and affordability change patient behavior
✅ Why price transparency alone may not solve healthcare decision-making
✅ What cross-border care in Mexico reveals about access, cost, and trust
✅ Why patients delay care when the system feels unaffordable or inaccessible
✅ How AI could support more informed healthcare consumers
✅ Why healthcare shopping depends on context, quality cues, family, and trust

Key Timestamps
(01:26) How consumers shop for healthcare
(02:08) From physician-directed care to consumer navigation
(03:13) Deductibles, affordability, and patient responsibility
(06:04) Why quality indicators change by market
(07:09) U.S. vs. Mexico waiting room example
(10:20) Why more information is not always better
(11:43) What cross-border healthcare consumers understand about price
(14:05) Which care decisions can be simplified for patients
(17:38) Patient-centered care and co-producing decisions
(22:15) Why delayed care may be more costly long term
(25:05) Estimating cross-border care volume
(26:43) Why patients travel to Mexico for care
(31:08) How U.S. referral pathways amplify costs
(35:06) AI, patient agency, and healthcare decision support
(37:11) Why consumer segmentation matters in healthcare

Key Takeaways
💎 U.S. patients are increasingly expected to behave like healthcare consumers, but most have never been trained to shop for care.
💎 Price transparency is important, but simply giving patients more information can create confusion rather than better decisions.
💎 Quality signals are context-dependent; the same cue can mean very different things in different healthcare markets.
💎 Cross-border care in Mexico shows how access, price, trust, and patient experience can drive healthcare decisions.
💎 Patients may not overuse care because they do not know the cost; many delay care because the system feels unaffordable or inaccessible.
💎 AI may help patients gain more agency, but healthcare leaders must account for trust, safety, segmentation, and misinformation risk.
💎 The future of consumer healthcare may require co-produced decisions between patients, clinicians, families, payers, and technology.

Guest Bio
Kelli Frias is a Provost Associate Professor of Marketing at American University’s Kogod School of Business. She studies how people navigate uncertainty, evaluate imperfect information, build trust, and make tradeoffs inside complex systems such as healthcare, AI, and markets. Some of her latest research explores the affordability of healthcare, dual market navigation, and medical influencer credibility. She is an Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Fellow and recipient of nearly $ 2 million in National Science Foundation grants, a $1.2 million grant from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, and the VentureWell Foundation.

SEO Keywords
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