Health Affairs

Editor’s Note: Earlier posts by Timothy Jost provide analyses of regulations implementing provisions of the new health reform legislation governing a patient bill of rights, grandfathered plans, tax exempt hospitals, the small employer tax credit, the Web portal, reinsurance for early retirees, and young adult coverage.  On July 14, 2010, the Departments of Treasury, Labor, and Health and... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: In addition to Carol Levine (photo and bio above), authors of this post include Eric Coleman, Professor in the Division of Health Care Policy and Research, University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine; and Mary Naylor, Director of the New Courtland Center for Transitions and Health, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. The opportunity for significant... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: For more on electronic health records and meaningul use requirements, see the April issue of Health Affairs, “Health IT: The Road To ‘Meaningful Use’“. This morning, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology released the final rules that will guide... Read the rest of this entry »

Why are people saying that we don’t know how to contain health care costs? I’d argue that we do know how. What we don’t know is how to get better practices accepted and spread. Behavior change is difficult, even when we can advance quality of care and contain costs. Let me give you one potent... Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most oft-repeated arguments for health reform is that uninsured patients make costly and delayed trips to the ER when they do not have a health plan that pays for care at physicians’ offices. Insure the uninsured, it is said, and they will decrease their reliance on the ER and get prompter, less... Read the rest of this entry »

Portions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, are unconstitutional, Judge Joseph Tauro of the United States District Court in Boston ruled in two cases yesterday. The cases arose in Massachusetts, which recognizes same-sex marriages, and they revolved around the obstacle DOMA creates when members of... Read the rest of this entry »

A common theme among health reformers has been that the small-group and individual markets for health insurance are too concentrated and thus inadequately competitive. The proposed remedy is to have more independent insurers compete within local markets.  Reformers left of center on the ideological spectrum – President Obama prominent among them – advanced this thesis... Read the rest of this entry »

Here are links to some recent health-related posts on other philanthropy blogs. Health Disparities Report Shows Health Disparities between White and Minority Boys and Young Men: This June 30, 2010, post by Daniel Weintraub describes a collection of five reports funded by the California Endowment (TCE), which were released that day. The findings show that... Read the rest of this entry »

The new health reform law charges the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with testing new payment and delivery models intended to improve health outcomes and restrain costs. But as the July issue of Health Affairs, published yesterday, points out, implementing all of these activities will require a combination of flexibility, leadership, coordination,... Read the rest of this entry »

A new GrantWatch paper, “A Philanthropy Tackles Growth in Health Costs at the State Level” was released today as part of the July 2010 issue of Health Affairs. Authors David Sandman, senior vice president of the New York State Health (NYSHealth) Foundation, and Anthony Kovner, a professor of public health and health management at the... Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama will bypass the Senate and use a recess appointment today to install Don Berwick as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Such an appointment, made while the Senate is not in session, will enable Berwick to assume the full powers of CMS administrator without Senate confirmation but will last only until the end of the... Read the rest of this entry »

Posts on accountable care organizations, implementing health reform, and consumer resistance to evidence-based care topped the list of Health Affairs Blog most-read posts for June. The full list is below.  An Accountable Care Organization Reading List Chris Fleming New Health Affairs Issue: Implementing Health Reform by Chris Fleming Implementing Health Reform: Grandfathered Plans by Timothy Jost... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of a two-part post by Amitai Etzioni examining the nation’s anti-obesity policies through the lens of a responsive communitarian philosophy. Yesterday, Etzioni laid out a responsive communitarian framework and used it to diagnose the problems with our current methods of fighting obesity. Today, Etzioni describes how these current policies should be... Read the rest of this entry »

The most-read GrantWatch Blog post during this time period reported that the philanthropic community had a terrific showing in the June 2010 issue of Health Affairs. Numerous articles published in that issue, which had the theme of “Moving Forward on Health Reform,” were related in some way to foundations: Foundation staffers were authors of some articles, and foundations funded... Read the rest of this entry »

Texas Republican Rep. Michael Burgess took a strong stand on the new health care reform law yesterday morning, arguing that opponents must stop its implementation by targeting its funding. He also predicted that there would not be a permanent fix to the Medicare sustainable growth rate until at least after the 2010 election. Burgess, a... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of a two-part post by Amitai Etzioni examining the nation’s anti-obesity policies through the lens of a responsive communitarian philosophy. Today, Etzioni lays out a responsive communitarian framework and uses it to diagnose the problems with our current methods of fighting obesity. Tomorrow, Etzioni describes how these current policies... Read the rest of this entry »