Choices in health care: what are they and what are they worth?

This overview article provides a conceptual introduction to this special issue on health care choices, containing four main papers originally commissioned in 1997 for a conference titled "The Power of Choice in the Health Care Marketplace and Its Consequences," sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation under its Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) program and conducted by the Alpha Center on November 19, 1997. Drawing on information from these four papers, the authors discuss what factors affect the different choices we face, highlighting the fact that different players in the health care system face diverse and often conflicting choices and trade-offs. The authors then examine the consumer choice model and its premise that when consumers are presented with adequate information about these different choices, they will make selections about plans, providers, and health insurance that will move the health care system toward a higher quality/lower cost equilibrium.