When it comes to health benefits, what is most important to you? Are there certain benefits that are absolutely necessary? Are there some that you could do without?

That's exactly what the Center for Healthcare Decisions wanted to know. They recently released the report "What Matters Most: Californians' Priorities for Healthcare Coverage."

Understanding public priorities for health care benefits is a big deal for lawmakers. Currently, Congress is charging ahead toward health care reform, and figuring out how to design minimum benefit standards for health plans is part of their agenda. A minimum benefits package will make sure Americans have insurance that means something, that they will get the care they need, not a bunch of runarounds and denials of coverage. One way lawmakers can connect with American values on health care is to understand what the American people want in their health benefit package.

Data for the Center for Healthcare Decisions report comes from California residents who were randomly surveyed over the phone or participated in group discussion sessions. Survey respondents were given a series of hypothetical health care vignettes, and asked to rank the importance of coverage for the condition or person in the vignette. Respondents were also asked if they were willing to pay more in their own premiums to cover the condition. For example, how important is it to cover a 24-year-old woman's asthma medications, so she is able to lead a more normal, active life? Should we cover the price of cholesterol medication for a woman who would rather take pills than follow her doctor's advice and change her diet?

Benefits essential for saving lives, curing illness and disease, enabling those suffering from illness to remain contributing members of society (to work and provide for their families), preventing new illness, and controlling serious or debilitating physical pain, received the highest priority, according to the study. People also gave the highest priority to treatments proven to be effective by medical evidence.

Medical problems that did not have as serious an impact on quality of life were less likely to get coverage. For example, let's say a 32-year-old man was in a bike accident and has knee problems. Some respondents were told this man now has trouble walking, and suffers from chronic knee pain. They ranked this priority of treatment, on average, as 7.9 on a scale of 1 to 10, and 90 percent of people approved coverage for his knee surgery. Another group of respondents were told the man has no pain, but has difficulty playing soccer. They ranked this at only a 5.6 on the priority scale, and only 63 percent approved coverage for his surgery.

Problems that were given lowest priority for coverage:

• Were unsightly but not physically harmful
• Delay or prevent individuals from pursuing recreational activities
• Treatments that are requested by patients for convenience or to feel reassured
• Are not medically significant or would resolve over time without treatment

We do have limited resources in health care. This doesn't mean the solution is denying care. In fact, many health systems have been able to utilize resources more wisely, providing more necessary care and less wasteful care. This makes patients healthier while lowering costs. (Check out our Health CEOs for Health Reform series for more info.) Successful health reform is going to include changes that maximize quality and minimize cost.  We need to spend smarter, utilizing tools such as comparative effectiveness research to determine what treatments are most helpful to patients.

But we do have to make some tough choices about health care, and that ultimately means understanding what people value and want from their health care system, as well as what they need to stay healthy.