A new report, released August 29 by Florida Health Care Association (FHCA) and funded by The John A. Hartford Foundation, offers ten recommendations for improving how frail and elderly people are cared for during major disasters, such as hurricanes, so as to prevent needless deaths. LuMarie Polivka-West, in an introductory letter to the report–Caring for Vulnerable Elders [...]

On the second anniversary of the disastrous Hurricane Katrina, it is fitting to look at issues of risk and preparedness. Today, Health Affairs Blog is hosting the blog carnival “Cavalcade Of Risk” which was started by Hank Stern of InsureBlog.
Preparing For Disaster
In a report in this morning’s St. Augustine Record, Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier [...]

No–health systems today are still not prepared to handle the risk of a Katrina-level disaster, says one Gulf-area health care provider in an interview published today on Health Affairs’ Web site [2-week free access]. Other news stories today, the second anniversary of the Katrina hurricane, also highlight the long road ahead on the health care front. [...]

This morning the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the number of uninsured Americans jumped to 47 million in 2006, up from 44.8 million in 2005. In percentage terms, there were 15.8 percent of Americans without insurance in 2006, up from 15.3 percent in 2005. This also represents the sixth year in a row that the [...]

Daniel Goldberg of the Medical Humanities Blog hosts a terrific Health Wonk Review today. First time I’ve seen Erasmus, Cicero, and Martin Luther mentioned in this roving round-up of the best of health policy blogging. His summary of posts makes terrific reading.

The current SCHIP debate is about more than just children’s health coverage. Behind the rhetoric from both sides lies the struggle to define the future of health care in America. One side in the debate is using SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) reauthorization to incrementally expand the role of government in the health care [...]

In a wistful and wise editorial in the August 3 Washington Post, David Broder mourned what the SCHIP debate had become–an ugly polarizing event.
Many commentators have wondered how a bipartisan program passed during the waning years of the Clinton administration under a Republican-dominated Congress descended into an ugly scrimmage beset by cries of socialized medicine, [...]

In SCHIP reauthorization, sound and fury surround the following question: What should be the highest income level for SCHIP-eligible children? The more important challenge facing policymakers, however, is covering low-income, uninsured children who already qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP, since these children comprise the bulk of uninsured youngsters. To reach them, SCHIP reauthorization needs to [...]

Genevieve Kenney, a principle research associate at the Urban Institute, is a coauthor of this post. She is a nationally renowned expert on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, Medicaid, and the broader coverage and access issues facing low-income children and their families.
It is now becoming a tradition that major legislation to expand [...]

One of the more peculiar aspects of life in Washington D.C. is the politicization of policy problems, to the point that the political framing effort hopelessly distorts the matter at hand. The 2007 debate over the reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program is turning out to be a classic example of this phenomenon.
SCHIP [...]

Congress and the White House are poised for a showdown over reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program before the program expires on September 30, with both houses having passed legislation that the president has vowed to veto.
While President Bush and majorities in both houses of Congress support reauthorization of SCHIP, each offers [...]

The numbers are in. Last month on the Health Affairs Blog Senior Editor Sarah Dine’s musings on SiCKO was the most-read post of the month and the third-most-read post since the launch of the blog. Only Linda Aiken’s mythbusting post on the nurse shortage and Uwe Reinhardt’s closer look at HSAs have ranked higher. Listed [...]

As the debate surrounding reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program continues, Health Affairs is publishing a series of articles on the program. In an article published July 26 (free access for two weeks), Benjamin Sommers of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston reports that one-third of all children who were uninsured in 2006 [...]

I’ve worked in my small-town general practice in Scotland for ten years, combining clinical work there with a university post. In many ways my practice is pretty average. We have 5,700 patients, of all ages and from a mix of socioeconomic backgrounds. As in virtually all other British general practices, patient care is shared across [...]