Health Affairs

As 2011 comes to a close, we draw ever closer to January 1, 2014, the day when the most significant changes wrought by the Affordable Care Act will come into effect.  Indeed, we are only weeks away from the halfway point between March, 2010, when the ACA was signed into law and October, 2013, the... Read the rest of this entry »

Since its inception in 2003, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has saved millions of lives through providing anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS.  PEPFAR has been essential in moving overall coverage levels in African countries from near zero to a few countries reaching 80 percent coverage (e.g. Botswana) and several... Read the rest of this entry »

In a rural town in western Uganda, Nagasha struggled to find the money to pay for her baby’s delivery at a faith-based hospital. She was forced to sell part of her harvest and her husband had to work overtime to come up with the 20,000 Ugandan Shillings. However, when preparing for the birth of her... Read the rest of this entry »

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction wasn’t dubbed the “super committee” for nothing. In theory at least, it had immense and unprecedented power.  If the select committee had been able to produce a consensus plan on deficit reduction, that legislation would have been guaranteed an up or down vote in the House and Senate... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: Below, we offer “Defensive Medicine,” the first health policy poetry to appear on Health Affairs Blog. The author is Adam Possner, a general internist and an assistant professor at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, whose poetry has been featured in the Journal of the American Medical Association and... Read the rest of this entry »

Attend AcademyHealth’s National Health Policy Conference (NHPC) to hear directly from state policymakers, analysts, and practitioners about how they are facing those challenges and seizing new opportunities in a post-ACA environment. The 2012 meeting agenda features a special focus on states: Challenges of ACA Implementation at the State Level Representatives from some of the agencies... Read the rest of this entry »

The effort to cut federal budget deficits resembles nothing so much as the old movie serials in which each week the hero ran a gantlet of perils the last of which threatened imminent death or dismemberment.  Seven days later, the intrepid adventurer would somehow escape unscathed, only to repeat the cycle. The courageous crusader of... Read the rest of this entry »

Productivity at a breast care center is laudable, but not if interactions with scared or vulnerable patients lose the individualized human touch, writes Colleen Fogarty in the November Health Affairs Narrative Matters essay. Fogarty, a physician who practices at a federally qualified health center, describes her mammogram and follow-up care at a respected, high-volume breast... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: A newly updated Health Policy Brief from Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provides more information on the CLASS Act and where we stand now regarding the need to provide affordable coverage for long-term services and supports. The announcement by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that the Community... Read the rest of this entry »

Check these out in case you missed them when they first came out on GrantWatch Blog. 1. “Rural Health: Report from the Kentucky Health Policy Forum,” by Susan Zepeda and Amy Watts (September 23). Once again, this post by two staffers at the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, in Louisville, made the most-read list. This... Read the rest of this entry »

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) is the closest thing Congress has to adult supervision on important health policy questions. The Commission commands bipartisan respect both for its record of sound policy advice and for its leadership. With its October recommendations, MedPac attempted to solve the sustainable growth rate (SGR) physician payment formula budget crisis... Read the rest of this entry »

The McKinsey Global Institute reported in 2007 and 2008 that the United States spends twice as much for health care as for food. According to Census and Department of Agriculture data that pattern continues. Yet millions remain outside the protection of health insurance and many nominally within its bounds are seriously underinsured. Millions of individuals... Read the rest of this entry »

As Congress faces mounting pressure to rein in Medicare spending, two sides seem to be squaring off. The don’t-touch-a-thing-other-than-squeezing-provider-fees position seems to appeal to mainly Democrats, while eat-your-spinach reforms, including more cost sharing and higher premiums, seem to appeal mainly to Republicans. Neither position is very appealing to voters, however, nor should they be. Is... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: There are ongoing legal and policy debates regarding the role of the Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC) in advising the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on relative Medicare payment rates for different types of physician services. Below, Peter Carmel, the president of the American Medical Association, defends the role of the... Read the rest of this entry »

The latest edition of the Health Wonk Review is available at InsureBlog. There, Hank Stern highlights a smorgasbord of great health policy posts, including Mark Hall’s Health Affairs Blog post on the importance of the individual mandate to the workability of health reform.

Today, November 14, 2011, the Supreme Court decided to review a decision of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals striking down the minimum coverage requirement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as unconstitutional.  The case will probably be argued before the Court in March and decided in the early summer. Procedurally, the Court “granted certiorari.” ... Read the rest of this entry »

It was recently reported that a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found, contrary to expectations, that demands on safety-net providers in Massachusetts have actually increased as a result of moving to a full coverage model.  While the study concludes that patients choose to use safety-net providers because of affordability and convenience, the underlying... Read the rest of this entry »

Grantmakers In Health’s Fall Forum, held in Washington, DC, included a well-attended one-day issue dialogue on the health care safety net. Following are a few highlights from speakers’ remarks and the subsequent Q & A session. To start off the day, well-known analysts Leighton Ku of the George Washington University (GWU) and Bruce Siegel of... Read the rest of this entry »

October’s list of most-read Health Affairs Blog posts is led by Maribeth Shannon’s piece on the challenges of getting consumers involved in directing their health care. Several posts on the Medicare Shared Savings Program (ACOs) final rule also make the list, as do posts on the legal fight over health reform; the process of determining... Read the rest of this entry »

More and more foundations, it seems, are interested in oral health these days. The topic generated some buzz at a Grantmakers In Health meeting earlier this month, I noticed. The November issue of Health Affairs, just released this week, has a peer-reviewed GrantWatch paper on oral health care for children. Its abstract is free to... Read the rest of this entry »