Health Affairs

Since 1987, Health Affairs has published news and insights into health care and health policy philanthropy in its ongoing journal section called GrantWatch. Now GrantWatch has moved to the blogosphere. The GrantWatch Blog will feature news and updates about health grant making, particularly as it relates to current health policy issues. Blog content will include... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: In addition to Dr. Leighton Ku (photo and bio above), the authors of this post include Dr. Peter Shin, an Associate Research Professor and Director of the Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health Policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, and Brian Bruen, a Lead Research Scientist and Lecturer at... Read the rest of this entry »

At long last, health reform legislation appears headed for a series of final votes in the next few weeks. The ultimate outcome in treacherous political waters is uncertain. What should happen, from the perspective of a consumer advocacy organization, is abundantly clear: Congress should pass legislation this year to begin dramatically improving health care access,... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: The March issue of Health Affairs is a thematic issue focusing on the child obesity epidemic and supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Two days after the issue and an accompanying series of policy briefs was released at a March 2 Washington DC briefing, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held the first... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: The March issue of Health Affairs is a thematic issue focusing on the child obesity epidemic and supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Two days after the issue and an accompanying series of policy briefs was released at a March 2 Washington DC briefing, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held the first... Read the rest of this entry »

The most significant and most radical change to the health care system that President Obama is proposing is to virtually eliminate the market for individual insurance and replace it with a highly-regulated health insurance exchange. But why would anyone want to do that? One reason is the persistent myth that the market for individual insurance... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: The post below by Jonathan Kolstad and Neeraj Sood prompted a comment from Jeff Lemieux, who directs the Policy and Research Center at America’s Health Insurance Plans, a health insurance industry group. See “Individual Market Premium Increases: The Debate Continues” for a response by Kolstad and Sood to Lemieux’s comment. Anthem Blue Cross... Read the rest of this entry »

Democratic proposals to cut Medicare spending are good policy, said New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg, the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, at a Health Affairs Media Breakfast this morning. The problem, according to Gregg, is that Democrats want to use the money saved to fund new benefits under health reform legislation, rather than... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: In addition to Peter Pronovost (photo and biography above), authors of this post include Julius Pham, Assistant Professor, Emergency Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Sara Singer, Assistant Professor, Harvard School of Public Health,  Department of Health Policy and Management, Massachusetts General Hospital; Jerod Loeb, Executive Vice President for Research, The Joint... Read the rest of this entry »

In “Shock Me, Tube Me, Line Me,” a Narrative Matters essay in the February 2010 issue of Health Affairs, emergency physician Boris Veysman sets forth his own version of an advance directive and challenges common perceptions about care at the end of life. An excerpted version of Veysman’s essay appears in today’s Washington Post Health... Read the rest of this entry »

With apologies to Arthur Miller … President Obama went back before the cameras again Wednesday, providing yet another recycling of fading rationales for his health reform product that more voters would rather leave on the Capitol Hill store shelves than purchase.   But “attention must be paid” whenever the president speaks.  He tried to claim that “we... Read the rest of this entry »

Posts on health reform dominate the ten most-read Health Affairs Blog posts for February. Also on the list are reports on health spending and an innovative way to supplement the primary care workforce: Health Reform: The Need To Move Forward by Henry Aaron Getting Health Reform Done by Timothy Jost The Grandparents Corps: A New... Read the rest of this entry »

Over at his blog “Wright On Health,” Brad Wright presents some of the best in recent health policy blogging in the latest edition of the Health Wonk Review.

An article published earlier this week by Health Affairs discusses a new approach to managing child obesity that supports the delivery of so-called secondary care — referral-based specialized visits — by primary care teams within community health centers.  Eight centers in Massachusetts have launched the Healthy Weight Clinic, and the results over fifteen months show... Read the rest of this entry »

The March issue of Health Affairs, a thematic issue on child obesity supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, was released at a March 2 briefing in Washington D.C. Audio, slides, and an agenda from the briefing are available on the Health Affairs Web site, and video will be posted soon.

Children in the United States snack almost three times a day on salty chips, candy, and other junk food, according to one of the first studies to look at long-term eating patterns in children. The increase in snacking—which now accounts for more than 27 percent of daily caloric intake in children—added 168 calories per day... Read the rest of this entry »

In conjunction with its March 2010 issue on child obesity, Health Affairs has prepared a series of policy briefs. The new Health Affairs volume demonstrates that policy leaders can and should take crucial steps to address the obesity epidemic,  and the briefs encapsulate policy recommendations from articles in the March issue. The briefs also contain links back to the full-length Health Affairs... Read the rest of this entry »

How should America tackle an obesity crisis that is threatening the health and well-being of nearly one-third of its children? That is the subject of the March 2010 edition of Health Affairs, which both describes the root causes of this pathology and offers prescriptions for improving the health of America’s children. The March issue is... Read the rest of this entry »

Many journalists have called and asked me what I have learned from watching the much heralded Health Care Summit at Blair House. Actually quite a bit, as the discourse there crystallized so clearly the ideological division that makes coherent and comprehensive health reform so difficult in this country, if not impossible. In thinking about this... Read the rest of this entry »