Health Affairs

In health care policy circles the acronym “PMPM” usually stands for “per member per month” – a measurement used to describe payments in a capitated system, or prescriptions used by members of a drug plan.  However, after the victory of Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race, it can also stand for health reform “post-Massachusetts post... Read the rest of this entry »

One of the more interesting recent health policy events took place at the Brookings Institution’s Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform. The December 2nd event did not focus on the reform bills in the House and Senate or the horse trading and sausage making that has gone into them.  The panels and discussion, titled “Using Data to... Read the rest of this entry »

On September 30, 2009, the Harvard School of Public Health, NPR, and the Kaiser Family Foundation released the findings of some new polling on how the public perceives the current debate about health care or health insurance reform.  NPR discussed how most of the public feels that they are not represented in the debate, although... Read the rest of this entry »

Several recent stories have reminded us that perhaps the most looming health crisis is not the political debate about health reform but the pandemic swine flu H1N1. The dreaded phone call has not come from a pollster or the local political party urging you to call your representative, but from a summer camp or overseas program... Read the rest of this entry »

Last week’s New Yorker article by Atul Gawande highlighted the phenomenally high variations in cost of medical care and services between regions in the United States, specifically focusing on McAllen, Texas. Gawande’s spotlight on McAllen was based on many studies of our health care system. For Gawande’s readers, we would like to point you to... Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday, 15 January 2009, the House of Representatives passed a reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, CHIPRA, by a vote of 289 to 139. On the same day the Senate Finance Committee approved a similar version of the bill by a vote of 12 to 7 and placed it on the Senate’s calendar.... Read the rest of this entry »

As Jacob, one of the three Old Testament patriarchs, flees from his brother Esau, he stops for the night at Bethel, where he dreams of a ladder going from earth to heaven with the angels of God ascending and descending the ladder (Genesis 28:11-19). There is extensive biblical commentary on this dream and particularly on... Read the rest of this entry »

The State Children’s Health Insurance Program was supposed to be the MVP of various health care policy initiatives in 2007. SCHIP reauthorization, featured widely in conferences, at meetings, and on the Health Affairs Blog, had broad, bipartisan support uniting very strange bedfellows of all political stripes. Nonetheless, two bills for reauthorization were vetoed, and a modest extension keeps the... Read the rest of this entry »

The last week of February 2008 marked the first anniversary of the death of Deamonte Driver, the twelve-year-old-boy from Prince Georges’ County, Maryland who died from a tooth infection that spread to his brain. His death was another sorry statistic in the litany of sorry statistics about the disparities in health and access to health insurance... Read the rest of this entry »

In the wake of the failure of the California health care reforms and the continuing focus on Massachusetts’ reforms, everyone in the American health care policy community seemed to be focused on mandates. They have also been the subject of reporting and opinion pieces for the last two days in the New York Times as... Read the rest of this entry »

Does the fact that The Diving Bell and The Butterfly won the Golden Globe award for the best foreign movie tell us anything about French health care? Or does it tell us more about movies about health care, the artistic French vs. “The Ugly American”? For the upcoming Academy Awards, Michael Moore’s health care movie,... Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps the signal event in federal health policy for 2007 is the failure to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). On Wednesday, December 13, President Bush vetoed the second version of the SCHIP reauthorization.

On Thursday, November 1, 2007, at the Health Affairs 25th anniversary health policy summit, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) were presented awards for their leadership in bipartisan policy making in health care. In conjunction with their awards, the senators pledged their continued dedication to the cause of bipartisanship, particularly in regard... Read the rest of this entry »

While the last two weeks in August used to be a rather somnolent period in Washington, it seems like the participants in the SCHIP debate missed the vacation memo. The events of those weeks, the new CMS guidance on current SCHIP implementation and the release of the Census Bureau Report on Income, Poverty, and Health... Read the rest of this entry »

In a wistful and wise editorial in the August 3 Washington Post, David Broder mourned what the SCHIP debate had become–an ugly polarizing event. Many commentators have wondered how a bipartisan program passed during the waning years of the Clinton administration under a Republican-dominated Congress descended into an ugly scrimmage beset by cries of socialized... Read the rest of this entry »

The House Ways and Means Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee majorities yesterday released their mark-up reauthorizing the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. The House bill, known as the CHAMP act, differs significantly from the Senate Finance Committee’s bill in scope, but both bills reject estimates from the Department of Health and Human Services of the number of uninsured children.  On... Read the rest of this entry »

The Senate Finance Committee mark-up of the SCHIP reauthorization bill features a compromise increase of $35 billion for five years. The Bush administration requested a $5 billion increase, and the Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) had proposed a $50 billion increase in March. In its barest outlines, the bill recalls the initial SCHIP (State Children’s Health... Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Moore closes his movie SiCKO with a quotation from Alexis de Tocqueville. His paean to French social welfare benefits perhaps has to end with a Frenchman’s unique view of America, but a more appropriate lament for the state of America’s vision of ourselves should come from an earlier source, from the pen of one... Read the rest of this entry »

Some of the liveliest discussions at this year’s AcademyHealth Meeting were on state reform. The Massachusetts legislation and now implementation has served as an engine for discussion for many previously jaded health systems scholars, reformers, and activists. With California now following Massachusetts’ lead in proposing universal coverage, many scholars are wondering how this scenario will... Read the rest of this entry »

The current debates in the Congress about both the supplemental bill to augment current State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) shortfalls and the reauthorization of SCHIP for the next five years have produced many proposals swearing fealty to the prominence of children in our values and society. Even those opposing expansion of SCHIP do so... Read the rest of this entry »