Robert A. Berenson, MD, is an institute fellow at the Urban Institute. He is an expert in health care policy, particularly Medicare, provider payment, and provider market consolidation, having authored or coauthored nearly 100 publications on these and related topics. He has experience practicing medicine, serving in senior positions in two administrations, and helping organize and manage a successful preferred provider organization.

From 1998 to 2000, he was in charge of Medicare payment policy and managed care contracting in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In the Carter Administration, he served as an assistant director of the Domestic Policy Staff at the White House. He served a term on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) from 2009-2012, the last two years as vice chair. Dr. Berenson was an initial member of the Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee, created by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).  He has authored or co-authored  more than 100 published articles and has testified frequently in Congress.

Dr. Berenson is a board-certified internist who practiced for 12 years in a Washington, D.C., group practice and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.  He helped found and was co-medical director of National Capital PPO, a PPO that served 150,000 lives in the Washington DC metropolitan area. He was coauthor, with Walter Zelman, of The Managed Care Blues & How to Cure Them, published in 1998 and coauthor, with Rick Mayes, of Medicare Prospective Payment and the Shaping of U.S. Health Care in 2008.  He is an adjunct professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Catalyst for Payment Reform.