Robert Berenson, M.D., F.A.C.P., is a Senior 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 managed care contracting in the Health Care Financing Administration (now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). In the Carter Administration, he served as an Assistant Director of the Domestic Policy Staff. He was also National Program Director of IMPACS—Improving Malpractice Prevention and Compensation Systems—a grant program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, from 1994-1998.

Dr. Berenson is a board-certified internist who practiced for twelve years in a Washington, D.C. group practice, and is Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He is a graduate of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. For ten years he was medical director of the National Capital PPO, a large rental PPO serving the Washington, D.C. metropolitan areas and was co-author, with Walter Zelman, of The Managed Care Blues & How to Cure Them (1998). He co-authored Medicare Payment Policy and the Shaping of U.S. Health Care (2006) with Rick Mayes. In recent years, he has published widely on a range of topics, including physician payment issues, private plan contracting in Medicare and health care cost containment.