What does one call this economic/psychological fallacy?

[snarp]

Looking at the bill for the surgery, I found myself thinking, "Well, I guess it's good that I'm over my out-of-pocket limit on my insurance for the year, anyway! I can go to the dermatologist and only have to pay the copay."

See, it would be better never reach my out-of-pocket limit in the first place. Yet my brain sees it as a good thing - because, I guess, I get some kind of serotonin hit when I get an EoB and it says "patient responsibility = $0"? It's only $0 because I already paid $3,000*! It's not a good deal!

I resent this error on the part of my brain's math node. I'm sure there are scams that make use of whatever makes it happen.


* Or, rather, Mom and Dad are paying this bill, which is the big one, so I personally have only paid about $1,000.

Comments

[snarp]

I'm not sure it's the same thing; that one seems to me more like a weird form of the launching-energy vs. cruising-energy problem (I'm using the wrong terms for it), where people find it make the decision to start doing something than to keep it up once the decision's been made.

In example 2, the subject's got a choice between making a transaction - that is, spending the fifty cents - and getting something for it, or doing nothing and getting something for it. Regardless of the negligible financial stakes, the transaction option is "harder" because it requires a commitment on the part of the subject, and so requires more launch energy. Whereas in the other example, making a transaction is the only the option given to the subject, so s/he starts out already launched.