Do consumers use less health care and buy less health insurance when prices increase? If so, market-based reforms can be used to slow the growth of health costs and expand access by making health insurance less costly. If not, we cannot rely on the price system to accomplish these objectives.

Michael A. Morrisey reviews what we do and do not know about how consumers respond to price changes in a new book recently published by the NFIB Research Foundation, Price Sensitivity in Health Care: Implications for Health Care Policy. In his book, Morrisey discusses why health care consumers in some markets are more responsive to prices than in others, and the implications of these findings for health policy.