The Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics of the University of Pennsylvania is planning a two-part conference on Medicare Policy entitled """"""""What We Have Learned from Twenty Years of Medicare: Research Implications for Public and Private Sector Policy."""""""" The conference has a dual focus. The first is Medicare policy itself--its accomplishments, its effects on the health sector, and options for the future in a changing policy environment. The second focus is on existing research on Medicare--its timeliness, its usefulness for policy-makers, its underlying assumptions, and the impact of those assumptions on results. It is a major aim of this conference to improve the dialogue between researchers, policy makers, and interest groups by illustrating how high quality academic research can be integrated into the policy process. A second purpose is to develop a research agenda which will better meet the needs of policy makers in the future. The conference proceedings will be published in book form and will include the papers presented, a summary of work-group discussions, a synthesis of conference results, and a research agenda and relevant bibliography developed by conference participants. This proposal explicity seeks support for publication costs.
