Assessing social values for California's efforts to reduce the overuse of unnecessary medical care.

Background: A partnership of large health-care purchasers created a workgroup to reduce the overuse of harmful and wasteful medical care in California.

Objective: Employ a civic engagement process to identify the social values important to the public in considering different strategies to reduce overuse.

Intervention: Use of deliberation techniques for 3 case examples that explore possible strategies: physician oversight, physician compensation, increased patient cost-sharing or taking no definitive action.