Health Affairs

One of the annual rituals of Washington’s health policy calendar involves the release of projections for the next ten years of national health spending by actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). It then is followed immediately by desperate efforts by various interest groups and advocacy “analysts” to spin the new numbers... Read the rest of this entry »

The predictable lead sentence in a recent New York Times story proclaimed not only the obvious — that the economic crisis in the U.S. reduced use of routine medical care – but observed that such cutbacks are much deeper here than in countries with universal health care systems. And the supposed culprit was the usual... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: Yesterday, the Obama administration announced interim final regulations governing the temporary Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Below, Thomas Miller and James Capretta criticize this portion of the Act and the design of the temporary health insurance pools for high-risk individuals that it creates. For more on... 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 »

One by one, various cars are falling off the chugging legislative locomotive of Obama-style health “reform” as it tries to climb hills that are too steep.  The public plan option has checked in for rehab as a co-op and even some end-of-life counseling.  Bending-the-cost-curve measures were turned upside down by the Congressional Budget Office in July.  ... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: Last week Health Affairs published critiques of the health plans put forward by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (IL) and Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (AZ). Health Affairs also published a third paper outlining a way that the best aspects of the two plans might be blended in a compromise package.... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: This post by Tom Miller of the American Enterprise Institute appears in tandem with last week’s publication on the Health Affairs Web site of an article by Jack Hadley of George Mason University, John Holahan of the Urban Institute, and coauthors, which estimates the cost of covering uninsured Americans. Miller’s post follows posts on the Hadley-Holahan article by Henry Aaron of the... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts on health and health care disparities that Health Affairs Blog is publishing in conjunction with the new March/April issue of Health Affairs on Disparities: Expanding The Focus, published with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Brian Smedley, Richard Epstein, and Dora Hughes contributed earlier posts in the series, which... Read the rest of this entry »