Informing American Health Care Policy provides a critical perspective on the National Medical ExpAnditure Surveys (NMES) and how these surveys have responded to the sometimes conflicting challenges of policy and research. Sponsored by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research and written by a stellar panel of interdisciplinary experts including contributions from nationally known economists, sociologists, and survey researchers, this essential resource is filled with lessons learned and emerging strategies for the future.

ALAN C. MONHEIT, Ph.D. is the director of the division of social and economic research in the Center for Cost and Financing Studies at the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research. Monheit has served as a member of the President Health Care Reform Task Force, as a technical advisor to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Health Insurance Association of America. In 1993 he received the first AHCPR Administrator's Award for health services research. RENATE WILSON is adjunct associate professor of public health in the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and a consultant to the Center for Cost and Financing Studies at the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research. ROSS A. ARNETT is the director of the Center for Cost and Financing Studies at the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research.