Health Affairs

 It’s time for America’s physicians, particularly its highly paid procedural specialists, to make a choice.  Are we primarily businessmen with a keen eye on the financial bottom line, or are we above all professionals, well versed in the healing arts and dedicated to our patients’ care, regardless of their circumstances?  America’s medical system is breaking... Read the rest of this entry »

This interesting and readable report is on the website of the Maternal Health Task Force, which I describe below. I thought the report was a must-read for grant-seekers in global health. Following are some highlights from the report with a few added comments of my own and some relevant links. Just a few funders are... Read the rest of this entry »

All health care spending in the United States is projected to grow at an annual average rate of 5.8 percent for the period 2010 through 2020, 1.1 percentage points faster than expected growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By 2020, health care spending is projected to be 19.8 percent of GDP, nearly one-fifth of economic... Read the rest of this entry »

The federal government’s Beacon Program provides funding to 17 communities that have already made inroads in the development of secure, private, and accurate systems of electronic health record (EHR) adoption and health information exchange. This is the fifth in a series of Health Affairs Blog posts in which leaders of several Beacon communities discuss their... Read the rest of this entry »

In the newest Health Affairs Narrative Matters essay, a seventeen-year-old West African immigrant who’s off to college says her facial bruising was inflicted by her father, and a young pediatrician learns about — and rethinks — the process of reporting child abuse and working with Child Protective Services. The essay, “Oh, My Father Hit Me,”... Read the rest of this entry »

Check out Julie Ferguson’s “Heatwave” edition of the Health Wonk Review at Workers’ Comp Insider. Julie presents a great selection of health policy blogging, including Tim Jost’s Health Affairs Blog series on proposed new regulations on state health insurance exchanges.

Other than the egg-laying exercise surrounding the ACO regulations, 2011 was a quiet year among Washington health policy experts until June 6 when McKinsey released the results of a survey of employer plans under the Affordable Care Act. The McKinsey study found that roughly 30 percent of employers were considering dropping their employee insurance coverage... Read the rest of this entry »

A new study, released online July 21 as a Web First by Health Affairs, finds that increased public health investments can produce measureable health improvements. The study, which will also appear in the journal’s August issue, analyzed changes in spending patterns and mortality rates within the service areas of nearly three thousand local public health... Read the rest of this entry »

The “Bipartisan Plan to Reduce our Nation’s Deficits” developed by the “Gang of Six (or Seven)”, a group of Senators from both parties, certainly is not something I would brag about before a group of Princeton students who, I routinely tell them, will have to grow up quickly to clean up the mess their parents... Read the rest of this entry »

Jim Knickman, whom many of you know from his current job as president and CEO of the New York State Health Foundation (and/or his former job as a vice president of research and evaluation at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) wrote a column this week for the Huffington Post. His topic was diabetes prevention, which... Read the rest of this entry »

States are making progress in varied ways toward creating the health insurance exchanges provided for in the Affordable Care Act, a senior official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said at a Health Affairs Newsmaker breakfast this morning. The state exchanges, which must be up and running by January 1, 2014, will provide... Read the rest of this entry »

Section 1001 of the Affordable Care Act establishes women’s preventive health benefits as a new mandatory coverage class for all insurance products sold in the individual and group markets, self insured employer-sponsored health plans, and benchmark plans enrolling newly eligible Medicaid beneficiaries.  In implementing the Act in accordance with the tight deadlines established under the... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-part post discussing behavioral economics and how it is being used by British policymakers. Part 1 focused mostly on the development and general principles of behavioral economics. Part 2 below discusses some of the ways British policymakers are seeking to use insights from behavioral economics. Behavioural... Read the rest of this entry »

The burden imposed on our society by type 2 diabetes mellitus has grown dramatically over the last decade.  Greater numbers of people than ever before are being diagnosed with diabetes at younger ages.  These people and their families must face the spectrum of implications brought on by diabetes, including its many associated medical complications. The... Read the rest of this entry »

As has been widely reported, the bipartisan group of Senators known as the “Gang of Six” today unveiled a long awaited framework to reduce the nation’s projected debt by $3.7 trillion over ten years. The plan presented by the group — which includes Democrats Conrad (ND), Durbin (IL), and Warner (VA) and Republicans Chambliss (GA),... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part post discussing behavioral economics and how it is being used by British policymakers. Part 1 below focuses mostly on the development and general principles of behavioral economics. Part 2, which discusses some of the ways British policymakers are seeking to use insights from behavioral economics, will... Read the rest of this entry »

The exchange and the reinsurance, risk adjustment, and risk corridor (3R) proposed regulations released by HHS on July 11 were only the first two in a series of exchange-related notices of proposed rulemakings (NPRMs) that will be rolled out in the coming weeks and months.  A third NPRM dealing with the Consumer Operated and Oriented... Read the rest of this entry »

The women recounted how their lives had been saved as they pleaded for the Food and Drug Administration not to withdraw approval for Avastin as a treatment for advanced breast cancer. They did so even without evidence that it provides benefit and with evidence that it confers risks. Their efforts were ultimately not successful: the... Read the rest of this entry »

The Department of Health and Human Services released proposed regulations this week on the new health insurance exchanges that the Affordable Care Act will set up.  While they don’t address all of the important policy issues related to how these new entities will work, they do lay out when people can sign up for exchange... Read the rest of this entry »

Medicaid has been in the news over the past few weeks, as President Obama and members of Congress debate whether to make cuts to the federal-state program for the poor and disabled (and to other large entitlement programs) that could help reduce the federal deficit. GrantWatch Blog has gathered just a sampling of what foundations... Read the rest of this entry »