Recent days have brought a flurry of coverage of community-based MRSA outbreaks. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus has been a problem of long standing in the hospital setting. However, recent outbreaks in schools, and the lack of a clear explanation from officialdom for the up-tick, have clearly given new legs to what health care and public health […]

Hosting the latest Health Wonk Review, Jason Shafrin at the Healthcare Economist highlights two posts as the week’s best. On A Healthy Blog, John McDonough reviews an article suggesting that the RAND health experiment — the “gold standard” for health economics — could be wrong. And on Wachter’s World, Bob Wachter discusses pay-for-performance, observing that 79 percent of physicians believe that P4P […]

Editor’s Note: This is part two of a two-part blog by several of the 2006-2007 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellows. Part one, which ran yesterday, describes the extent to which these international scholars felt able to make meaningful choices in their interactions with the American health care system. In part two below, the authors propose changes […]

Editor’s Note: This is part one of a two-part blog by several of the 2006-2007 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellows. The post below describes the extent to which these international scholars felt able to make meaningful choices in their interactions with the American health care system. In part two of their blog, which will appear on […]

Just when it looked as if the debate over the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) couldn’t get any more agonizing, some of the same folks who brought us the devastating RAND 55 percent study four years ago are back with the dismal news that children, on average, receive recommended treatment in only 46.5 percent […]

Bob Laszewski of Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review hosts a new edition of Cavalcade of Risk today. This round-up of recent blog posts on risk and its management is published every two weeks.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt has recently launched a blog. Today he offers the administration’s view on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) reauthorization bill, which President Bush recently vetoed. 
Sec. Leavitt says that he writes his own posts. So far he’s blogging about once a week. Here’s an excerpt from today’s […]

It’s the morning after President Bush’s veto of the reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). How did a program that started out with such bipartisan support become the health policy wonk equivalent of all-out war? Today’s Health Wonk Review takes a look across the blogosphere for some health policy soul-searching.
Politico blogger Ben […]

Editor’s Note: The following letter from Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) was originally published in the September/October 2007 issue of Health Affairs. The letter describes Sen. Brownback’s use of a Health Affairs paper as the basis for his Elimination of Neglected Diseases (END) amendment to the FDA Revitalization Act. President Bush signed a version of the […]

House Democratic leaders last week quietly compromised away the Medicare provisions in their State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) reauthorization bill as they hunkered down for a veto fight. Prudently set aside for the moment is the Dems’ aggressive attack on Medicare Advantage (MA) insurance subsidies. Gone also is an intriguing and widely overlooked package […]

The most-read post of September on the Health Affairs Blog was by Linda Aiken on Pennsylvania’s new legislation which focuses on tapping nurses and other health professionals to address health reform issues. Aiken, the Claire M. Fagin Leadership Professor of Nursing and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, also has the most-read blog post for […]

In the latest edition of Health Affairs and at the journal’s recent Washington briefing, “caring for the vulnerable” was the major agenda. It was a bittersweet occasion. Health Affairs deserves much credit for challenging us on how well we care for the vulnerable.
However. “Caring for the vulnerable” is an important mission, like the heroic efforts […]