An index established by the U.S. Department of Labor for measuring changes in the prices of consumer products using a base year index for comparisons.
An economic index prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. It measures the change in average prices of the goods and services purchased by urban wage earners and clerical workers and their families. It is widely used as an indicator of changes in the cost of living, as a measure of inflation (and deflation, if any) in the economy, and as a means for studying trends in prices of various goods and services. The CPI is made up of several components which measure prices in different sectors of the economy. One of these, the medical care component, gives trends in medical care charges based on specific indicators of hospital, medical, dental and drug prices. The medical care component of the CPI characteristically rises faster than the CPI itself as do some other service components of the index. However, since the CPI measures charges, which are not always related to costs, the CPI may fail to accurately reflect changes in medical care costs.