Public spending for health care goes disproportionately to seniors and those in poor health, but it is less concentrated among low-income Americans than is sometimes thought.
In a study published today on the Health Affairs Web site, government analysts provide the first study since the 1970s that comprehensively analyzes the distribution of health care outlays and […]

Today Health Business Blog hosts the Health Wonk Review, which sums up the best of health policy blogging–from questions about future of managed care, Medicare, and health reform to nursing staff ratios, physician planning and more.

Government policymakers and private-sector stakeholders have been crafting the nation’s health care workforce for years without answering definitively a question that lies at the heart of the matter: should policymaking follow the values of many Americans and rely on market-based solutions, or — in this instance — does more prescriptive government regulation make more sense? […]

In June, Health Affairs Blog featured a series of guest posts on pay for performance and offered blogs from the Global Health Council meeting and Annual Research Meeting of AcademyHealth, both held in Washington, D.C. Sign up for email or RSS feed alerts to stay on top of new postings. Additional commenting always welcome.

Health Wonk […]

No doubt that Teddy Kennedy’s dramatic return to the Capitol on Wednesday and the senatorial smackdown on Medicare that ensued were the stuff of legend. With Kennedy’s vote putting the Senate Democrats over the hump on cloture on S. 3101, nine Republicans who had voted against cloture last week pivoted to produce a potentially veto-proof […]

PAIN
(Chicago, June 19 – June 21) I sit down at a circular table in the high-ceilinged meeting room and conversationally ask the two women already there what brought them to this three-day conference. The first replies that she had a daughter die from a medical mistake. The other, a nurse, lost a son to medical […]

Like the United States, China is grappling with a serious obesity epidemic, with nearly 25 percent of its adults considered overweight or obese, according to a study out today in Health Affairs. The rate of overweight adults in the country is predicted to double by 2028 without interventions to stem the growth rate. An increasingly Westernized […]

Editor’s Note: Shorter versions of this post have appeared on The Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review and The Health Care Blog. You can also read a related follow-on post by Robert Laszewski here.
Senate Democrats and Republicans are engaged in one heck of a “game of chicken” over the automatic July 1 10.6% Medicare physician […]