eAlert Tue, 12/15/2015 - 12:00 71fbd2d4-6baa-45d5-a42d-ba21690d586c

<p>Medicare claims data have historically been the best source of information about U.S. health care spending, and health policy researchers and policymakers have often used Medicare data to comment about spending across the entire U.S. health care system. In a new blog post, The Commonwealth Fund’s Don Moulds says that as information about private health insurance claims has become available to researchers, it’s becoming clear that using Medicare data this way was likely a mistake.</p><p>Moulds points to new work by Yale economist Zack Cooper and colleagues, supported by The Commonwealth Fund and released this week, which further illustrates just how different Medicare and private health care spending really are. </p>

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/newsletters/ealerts/2015/dec/understanding-differences-between-medicare-and-private-insurance-spending Read the post