14 pages. A Presentation by CBO Director Peter Orszag to the Retirement Research Consortium. Excerpt: Research has increasingly shown that decisions are not made in a vacuum. Defaults matter. Perceptions of social norms matter. And policy designs need to account for those factors that, until recently, received little consideration in economic and policy analysis. Current pension policies are at the forefront of efforts to incorporate the lessons of behavioral economics. I hope that the same energy and care can be applied to research and policy development in the health care arena. The endeavor has the potential to yield great insight into how to better contain costs and improve people's health -- perhaps especially the health of those on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder.

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