The Affordable Care Act places strong emphasis on quality of care as a means to improve outcomes for Americans and promote the financial sustainability of our health care system. This report attempts to help employers understand the structural differences between health plans and the performance dimensions along which plans can differ, as well as to educate employers about available tools that can be used to evaluate plan options.

Until the 1980s, the Roman frontier in modern Jordan was among the least studied of the empire's far-flung border regions. From 1980 until 1989, the Limes Arabicus Project investigated the frontier east of the Dead Sea. Excavation focused on the late Roman legionary fortress of el-Lejjun as well as soundings of four smaller but contemporaneous forts. The project's regional survey recorded over five hundred other archaeological sites in the area, dating from the Paleolithic to the Late Islamic periods. This report presents detailed results from the excavated forts, a broad range of material cultural evidence from animal bones to bedouin burials, and provides a synthesis of the history of this frontier, which witnessed the first confrontation between the Byzantine Empire and the forces of Islam.