This grant supports a research project by economists Jay Battacharya (Stanford Medical School), Jon Levin (Stanford), Liran Einav (Stanford), and Amy Finkelstein (MIT) to use newly available datasets to compare the cost and performance of Medicare and Medicare Advantage to private insurance plans that cover similarly situated consumers. The team will examine a broad range of questions relevant to health care policy by comparing data on public insurance plan performance provided by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services with newly available data on private plan performance compiled by the Health Care Cost Institute. Issues to be examined include the differences in health care costs, services, and prices in public and private plans; what features of public or private plan structure account for these differences; and whether private insurance plans can or do deliver comparable outcomes to Medicare at lower costs.