Health Affairs

Editor’s Note: Health Affairs’deputy editor Parmeeth Atwal spoke recently with Ashok Alexander, director of Avahan, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s HIV prevention initiative in India. Health Affairs devoted its current July/August issue to “Global Health Financing” with support from the Gates Foundation. The Numbers Atwal: The World Health Organization (WHO) and Indian health officials... Read the rest of this entry »

The House Ways and Means Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee majorities yesterday released their mark-up reauthorizing the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. The House bill, known as the CHAMP act, differs significantly from the Senate Finance Committee’s bill in scope, but both bills reject estimates from the Department of Health and Human Services of the number of uninsured children.  On... Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Laszewski of the Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review blog hosts a terrific edition today of the Health Wonk Review. In his round-up of health policy blogs he highlights Joe Paduda’s continuing series on universal coverage; posts on insurance prices; Singapore as a medical tourist destination; electronic health records; and more.

Besides short-term budgetary or political advantage, what considerations enter into policy pronouncements made by health care decisionmakers? Does history enter into it? And do they really ask themselves if what they know to be true actually has a factual basis? A recent paper posted on the British History & Policy web site considers this question... Read the rest of this entry »

The Santa Barbara County Care Data Exchange was one of the most ambitious and publicized health data collection experiments in the country. But ten years after its inception, the project failed. At a time when the United States is seeking to expand the use of interoperable health information technology (IT) through regional data exchanges, what... Read the rest of this entry »

The rising prevalence of obesity is said to be threatening to drown the health care system under a wave of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. So some policymakers have suggested taxing foods high in saturated fats as a way to steer consumers clear of snacks that are bad for them and perhaps offset coming health care... Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Eskow of the blog The Sentinel Effect hosts today’s Cavalcade Of Risk. This blog carnival is a round-up of insurance-related blogposts. On the health care side of insurance, there are posts on such topics as universal coverage, electronic health IT records, insurance premium pricing, and more.

At least 150 million people worldwide suffer financial catastrophe each year and 100 million are pushed under the poverty level simply because they need to pay for health services, according to new World Health Organization (WHO) research published July 16 in the July/August issue of Health Affairs. The researchers found that countries could reduce the extent of health-related... Read the rest of this entry »

The Senate Finance Committee mark-up of the SCHIP reauthorization bill features a compromise increase of $35 billion for five years. The Bush administration requested a $5 billion increase, and the Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) had proposed a $50 billion increase in March. In its barest outlines, the bill recalls the initial SCHIP (State Children’s Health... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: As Health Affairs celebrates its 25th anniversary, we look back at some health policy highlights of the past quarter century—many of which are still highly relevant to today’s debates. Watch this space for regular postings on the “classics.” On June 12, 1986, the Wall Street Journal stated: “If you read nothing else this... Read the rest of this entry »

Increasingly, medical journals and publications are jumping into the fray with a variety of blogs. Individual blogs by doctors, nurses, and other health professionals have long been the norm. Indeed, one of the most highly read health blogs is Random Acts of Reality, a British blog by an EMT working for the London Ambulance Service.... Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s edition of the Health Wonk Review, hosted by Jay Norris of Colorado Health Insurance Insider, leads off with posts from around the health policy blogosphere on Michael Moore’s controversial movie, SiCKO. Want to know what John Goodman thinks of the movie? Read on. The Health Wonk Review is a biweekly compendium of the best of... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: Why have so few provider groups undertaken the self-analysis that the Virginia Mason Medical Center (VMMC) entered into through its use of the famed Toyota Production System, even before Aetna and large employers began to push VMMC to cut costs? This is just one question posed by James C. Robinson, Berkeley economist and... Read the rest of this entry »

What role should the U.S. government play in confronting global health challenges? What are Congress’s priorities for the reauthorization of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and how much should be invested in research to help stem the AIDS pandemic? How can we protect 150 million people globally from suffering financial catastrophe each... Read the rest of this entry »

Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, has just this week launched a blog that will focus on its areas of concern: global public health, climate change, and economic development and poverty.

Michael Moore closes his movie SiCKO with a quotation from Alexis de Tocqueville. His paean to French social welfare benefits perhaps has to end with a Frenchman’s unique view of America, but a more appropriate lament for the state of America’s vision of ourselves should come from an earlier source, from the pen of one... Read the rest of this entry »

This past month the most-read posts on the Health Affairs Blog focused particularly on the quest for value and quality via evidence-based medicine (EBM), comparative effectiveness lessons from the UK, and new research on quality and P4P. Other highly read posts covered the continuing presidential campaign and state health reform debates; immigration policy; and a... Read the rest of this entry »