People who live in the New England and Mideast regions of the United States spend significantly more on health care than those who live elsewhere in the nation, the federal government reported Tuesday in a Health Affairs Web Exclusive. Nine northeastern states (MA, ME, NY, CT, DE, RI, VT, WV, PA) and Alaska spent 20 percent [...]

Today’s Health Wonk Review leads off with posts around the health policy blogosphere on HillaryCare 2.0. Joe Paduda of Managed Care Matters (and cofounder of HWR) writes a great round-up. Health Affairs Blog hosts the Oct 4 edition, so stay tuned!

Expanding coverage to the forty-seven million Americans who now lack health insurance could greatly improve care for people who already are protected, according to a new study in the September-October issue of Health Affairs. Economists Mark Pauly of Wharton and José Pagán of the University of Texas-Pan American found that insured adults who live in communities [...]

Massachusetts took our breath away with the elegant political balance of its reform solution — whether the state’s universal coverage plan turns out to be implementable or not. California, on the other hand, leaves us scratching our heads: What is going on out there? 
Ultimately, it is a state that governs by referendum, and the fate [...]

What we’ve read in recent headlines was: 47 million Americans lack health insurance! Back on page 5, President Bush and Congress fight over reauthorizing the Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which augments Medicaid coverage for children (and expires at the end of September). Looking at the data that produced the headlines makes it clearer how hard health reform is [...]

Many of Washington policymakers and health policy experts are returning from August vacations to find that the month was not as quiet as expected. On Friday evening, August 17th, the Administration issued a major new directive on children’s health coverage that effectively eliminates SCHIP for children above 250 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), [...]

While the last two weeks in August used to be a rather somnolent period in Washington, it seems like the participants in the SCHIP debate missed the vacation memo. The events of those weeks, the new CMS guidance on current SCHIP implementation and the release of the Census Bureau Report on Income, Poverty, and Health [...]

Today the Health Wonk Review is hosted by physician blog, The Doctor Weighs In. Brian Klepper writes an entertaining round-up of the best in health policy blogging over the past two weeks.
In other blogosphere news, yesterday’s St. Louis Post Dispatch Business Section offered its list of health blogs to read for a “robust discussion of health care.” [...]

On July 20, 2007 Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell signed into law at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing several bills included in his comprehensive health reform plan, “Prescription for Pennsylvania.” Rendell’s plan is noteworthy among recent state health reform initiatives in focusing not just on covering the 7 percent of Pennsylvanians who are uninsured, [...]

Now that it’s September and Congress is back in session, it’s time to prepare for the September policy showdown on reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Last month Health Affairs Blog invited policy experts with wide-ranging views to set out the hot-button issues–such as the tobacco tax funding mechanism–and explain the politics. These posts [...]