The Netherlands, which combines mandatory universal health insurance with competition among private health insurers, has been frequently cited as a possible model for reform in the United States. You can read Wynand van de Ven and Frederik Schut’s examination of the Dutch experience (free access until May 27) in the May/June issue of Health Affairs, a thematic […]

By proposing to move away from the employer-based health care system to one emphasizing the individual market, Sen. John McCain (AZ), the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has set the stage for health care to become part of a major debate about government and the marketplace during this year’s election, Robert Blendon said May 5.
Blendon, a […]

Editor’s Note: In connection with the publication of its May/June issue, a thematic issue on health reform, Health Affairs organized a May 5 conference call on the role of health reform in the presidential election. The call was moderated by Health Affairs editor-in-chief Susan Dentzer. Participants included Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political […]

What role will the issue of health care reform play in the 2008 presidential election? How would the candidates control rising health costs and cover the uninsured, and how will the economic downturn affect efforts to expand access? Would the candidates’ reform proposals fix the health system’s flaws? What lessons can be drawn from previous […]

Health Affairs and its publisher Project HOPE are pleased to announce that Susan Dentzer will become the journal’s new editor-in-chief on May 1, 2008.
Dentzer, one of the nation’s most respected health policy journalists, is currently an on-air correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on the Public Broadcasting Service. She heads The NewsHour’s health unit, […]

Almost 17 percent of black children and 20.5 percent of Latino children in the United States live in “double jeopardy,” meaning that they live in both poor families and poor neighborhoods, according to research released today in the March/April issue of Health Affairs. In contrast, only 1.4 percent of white children live in double jeopardy.
In […]

James C. Robinson, Ph.D., who became editor-in-chief of Health Affairs last September, has decided to return to the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Kaiser Permanente Distinguished Professorship of Health Economics in the School of Public Health.
Robinson will step down as Health Affairs editor on July 1, 2008. The journal’s founding editor, John […]

On Thursday, February 28, 2008, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) will launch a non-partisan commission to identify and recommend practical solutions that address the many non-medical influences on health and improve opportunities for more Americans to make healthier choices.

As patient volumes in hospital emergency departments (EDs) are going up, waiting times to see an ED physician are getting longer, particularly for heart attack patients and those in need of the most immediate attention, according to a study by Harvard Medical School researchers at the Cambridge Health Alliance published today as a Health Affairs […]

Full implementation of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit contributed to an 18.7 percent increase in Medicare spending in 2006, the fastest rate of growth since 1981 and double the rise in 2005, the federal government reported today. In 2006, Medicare spending rose to $401.3 billion, up from $338.0 billion a year earlier, says the […]

Congress is on the verge of passing legislation mandating that health plans cover mental health (MH) and substance abuse treatment to the same extent that they cover other medical and surgical treatment. In a study published December 18 on the Health Affairs Web site, researchers say that passage of either the Senate or House version of this […]

A recent Health Affairs article by Columbia University’s Sherry Glied and coauthors is figuring prominently in the debate over whether to require individuals to purchase health insurance as part of the proposals to achieve universal coverage. In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton (NY) and former Sen. John Edwards (NC) have […]

Yesterday, Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag entered the blogosphere. Orszag says he will use his blog to talk about CBO’s work and the analysts behind it.
Orszag’s blogging debut has been noted widely in other blogs, such as that of fellow economist Brad DeLong. On his blog, economist Greg Mankiw poses this question: ”I wonder: Will Peter Orszag follow […]

Will health information technology (IT) be the silver bullet to create value in the health care sector? Michael O. Leavitt, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) discusses health IT and other health system management issues in an interview with Leonard Schaeffer, founding chairman and CEO of WellPoint, Inc., and currently […]

Hosting the latest Health Wonk Review, Jason Shafrin at the Healthcare Economist highlights two posts as the week’s best. On A Healthy Blog, John McDonough reviews an article suggesting that the RAND health experiment — the “gold standard” for health economics — could be wrong. And on Wachter’s World, Bob Wachter discusses pay-for-performance, observing that 79 percent of physicians believe that P4P […]

People who live in the New England and Mideast regions of the United States spend significantly more on health care than those who live elsewhere in the nation, the federal government reported Tuesday in a Health Affairs Web Exclusive. Nine northeastern states (MA, ME, NY, CT, DE, RI, VT, WV, PA) and Alaska spent 20 percent […]

Expanding coverage to the forty-seven million Americans who now lack health insurance could greatly improve care for people who already are protected, according to a new study in the September-October issue of Health Affairs. Economists Mark Pauly of Wharton and José Pagán of the University of Texas-Pan American found that insured adults who live in communities […]

As the debate surrounding reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program continues, Health Affairs is publishing a series of articles on the program. In an article published July 26 (free access for two weeks), Benjamin Sommers of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston reports that one-third of all children who were uninsured in 2006 […]

The Santa Barbara County Care Data Exchange was one of the most ambitious and publicized health data collection experiments in the country. But ten years after its inception, the project failed. At a time when the United States is seeking to expand the use of interoperable health information technology (IT) through regional data exchanges, what […]

At least 150 million people worldwide suffer financial catastrophe each year and 100 million are pushed under the poverty level simply because they need to pay for health services, according to new World Health Organization (WHO) research published July 16 in the July/August issue of Health Affairs. The researchers found that countries could reduce the extent of health-related […]