Editor’s Note: Today, The Health Affairs Blog begins a series of four posts on trends in performance measurement and performance-based payment in health care. The series focuses particularly on the increasing emphasis being placed on measuring and rewarding cost-efficiency. James Robinson and Tom Williams (below) contribute posts today. On Monday, Arnold Milstein and Howard Beckman weigh in.
In his blog posting, [...]

Editor’s Note: Today, The Health Affairs Blog begins a series of four posts on trends in performance measurement and performance-based payment in health care. The series focuses particularly on the increasing emphasis being placed on measuring and rewarding cost-efficiency. Today, James Robinson (below) and Tom Williams contribute posts. On Monday, Arnold Milstein and Howard Beckman weigh in.
The U.S. [...]

The Kaiser Family Foundation announced today that it will expand its Kaiser Daily Health Report to track and report on health policy news from the blogosphere. “Blog Watch” will appear on Tuesdays and Fridays each week. In today’s first edition of Blog Watch, Kaiser explains:

Editor’s Note: In a paper in the recently released May/June issue of Health Affairs, Donald Berwick, John Whittington, and Tom Nolan of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement lay out a strategy for improving American health care through the pursuit of the “’Triple Aim’: improving the individual experience of care; improving the health of populations; and [...]

Editor’s Note: In a paper in the recently released May/June issue of Health Affairs, Donald Berwick, John Whittington, and Tom Nolan of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement lay out a strategy for improving American health care through the pursuit of the “’Triple Aim’: improving the individual experience of care; improving the health of populations; and [...]

If you’re just reading the headlines, jobs and the economy have displaced access to affordable health insurance as the electorate’s top domestic concern with six months to go until Election Day. But digging a little deeper into the results of a new poll from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, it appears that voters also believe [...]

Jason Shafrin of the blog, Healthcare Economist, hosts this week’s Health Wonk Review. He’s written the biweekly round-up of the best of health policy blogging in “newspaper” format. It’s a great quick scan of what’s being debated in the health business and policy blogs, with Health Affairs Blog providing the lead story on health reform and the ‘08 [...]

The Netherlands, which combines mandatory universal health insurance with competition among private health insurers, has been frequently cited as a possible model for reform in the United States. You can read Wynand van de Ven and Frederik Schut’s examination of the Dutch experience (free access until May 27) in the May/June issue of Health Affairs, a thematic [...]

By proposing to move away from the employer-based health care system to one emphasizing the individual market, Sen. John McCain (AZ), the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has set the stage for health care to become part of a major debate about government and the marketplace during this year’s election, Robert Blendon said May 5.
Blendon, a [...]

Editor’s Note: In connection with the publication of its May/June issue, a thematic issue on health reform, Health Affairs organized a May 5 conference call on the role of health reform in the presidential election. The call was moderated by Health Affairs editor-in-chief Susan Dentzer. Participants included Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political [...]

What role will the issue of health care reform play in the 2008 presidential election? How would the candidates control rising health costs and cover the uninsured, and how will the economic downturn affect efforts to expand access? Would the candidates’ reform proposals fix the health system’s flaws? What lessons can be drawn from previous [...]

In May 2007, Indiana enacted comprehensive health reform in the form of the Indiana Check-Up Plan and its centerpiece, the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP). After intense negotiations, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services granted Indiana the 1115b waiver required for the plan to go into effect in December 2007, and within three months over [...]