HEALTH CARE COSTS CAN'T WITHSTAND FREE MARKETS:

A team of researchers led by Christopher Whaley of the University of California at Berkeley and Castlight Health examined what happens when hundreds of thousands of people are given access to a website that provides prices for various medical procedures.

Historically, consumers have had difficulty finding out the price they will be charged for a specific procedure or visit. But it's reasonable to expect that if prices were provided, and if the patients had "skin in the game" in the form of cost-sharing, they would seek out lower-priced options.

That is exactly what the researchers found. Use of the price-transparency tool was associated with a 14 percent decline in payments for laboratory tests, a 13 percent decline in payments for advanced imaging tests, and a 1 percent decline in payments for clinician office visits. Giving more information to consumers about the prices of their care, in other words, led them to choose less expensive options.

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