The Health Care Marketplace Project provides information and analysis about the health care market, including trends in health insurance, health care costs, and health care services. The Project focuses specifically on trends in employer-sponsored health insurance; how health care costs affect individuals and employers; the prescription drug industry, including spending, utilization, and advertising; private health insurance, including industry trends, consumer protections, and the individual insurance market; malpractice insurance; and analysis of policy proposals relating to health insurance reform, including using the tax system to subsidize the purchase of private health insurance.

This primer, prepared by Gary Claxton of the Institute for Health Care Research and Policy at Georgetown University, examines the structure and operation of private health insurance including the types of organizations that provide it, how managed care is delivered, and how risk pools work and describes how private health insurance coverage is regulated under state and federal laws. The primer explains how the current nature of private insurance relates to key issues facing federal and state policymakers.