Robert Berenson

Robert Berenson, M.D., is an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute. He is an expert in health care policy, particularly Medicare, with experience practicing medicine, serving in senior positions in two Administrations, and helping organize and manage a successful preferred provider organization. From 1998-2000, he was in charge of Medicare payment policy and private health plan contracting in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Previously, he served as an Assistant Director of the Carter White House Domestic Policy Staff and recently was a member of the Obama transition team. Effective July 2009, Dr. Berenson became a Commissioner of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) and was named Vice-Chair in 2010.

Dr. Berenson is a board-certified internist who practiced for twenty years, the last twelve in a Washington, D.C. group practice, and is Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He was co-author, with Walter Zelman, of The Managed Care Blues & How to Cure Them, and, with Rick Mayes, Medicare Payment Policy and the Shaping of U.S. Health Care. He is a graduate of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and on the faculty at the George Washington University Schools of Medicine and Public Health and the Fuqua School of Business at Duke.

Selected Publications

• "Getting Serious About Excessive Medicare Spending: A Purchasing Model for CMS," Health Affairs Web Exclusive, posted December 10, 2003.
• "Confronting the Barriers to Chronic Care Management in Medicare," with Jane Horvath, Health Affairs Web Exclusive, posted January 22, 2003. http://www.healthaffairs.org.
• "Using Managed Care Tools in Traditional Medicare-Should We? Could We?" with Dean R. Harris, Law and Contemporary Problems 65: 139-168, Autumn 2002.
• "The Future of Private Contracting in Medicare," with Bryan E. Dowd. AARP Public Policy Institute Issue Paper 2002-12, July 2002.
• The Managed Care Blues & How to Cure Them, with Walter A Zelman. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1998.
• "Ethical Practice in Managed Care: A Dose of Realism," with Mark A. Hall, Annals of Internal Medicine 128:395-402, March 1, 1998.

View all online publications by Robert Berenson