About the Authors

Christopher Whaley

cwhaley@berkeley.edu

Affiliations School of Public Health, U.C. Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley, CA, United States of America, Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland, CA, United States of America

Mary Reed

Affiliation Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland, CA, United States of America

John Hsu

Affiliations Mongan Institute for Health Policy, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States of America, Department of Medicine Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States of America, Department of Health Care Policy, Department of Health Care Policy, Boston, MA, United States of America

Vicki Fung

Affiliations Mongan Institute for Health Policy, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States of America, Department of Medicine Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States of America

Competing Interests

Christopher Whaley and Mary Reed are employed by Kaiser Permanente, which offers Medicare Advantage plans in which Medicare beneficiaries could enroll. John Hsu and Vicki Fung are employed by Massachusetts General Hospital, which contracts with Medicare to provide medical care to beneficiaries. John Hsu has served as a consultant to Commonwealth Care Alliance and to Kaiser Permanente, both of which provide care to Medicare beneficiaries.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: MR JH VF. Performed the experiments: MR JH VF. Analyzed the data: CW VF. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: CW MR JH VF. Wrote the paper: CW MR JH VF.