Editor’s Note: In addition to Arthur Garson (photo and bio available above), coauthors of this post include Margaret Whitehead, Tracy Buni, Catherine Sommers, and Karen Rheuban.
Given current trends, access to health care will worsen considerably in the next 15 years. The first wave of baby boomers is now turning 65, and health care utilization for this [...]

The Problem. The treatment of lower-income workers and families eligible for employer coverage is a difficult challenge for health reform. Many of these workers struggle to afford their rising contribution requirements. Recent survey findings indicate that 38 percent of workers eligible for employer coverage and with incomes under 200% of the federal poverty level (FPL) [...]

While the most visible national health reform fight at the moment focuses on a public plan option for people covered through health insurance exchanges (or gateways), a quieter debate is brewing over whether coverage for low-income people should be achieved through Medicaid expansions or subsidies to purchase insurance through an exchange. For example, the Senate [...]

Join us for a discussion, moderated by Susan Dentzer of Health Affairs, examining the impact of the nursing workforce on health care delivery, access and quality. This event, on Friday June 12 from 9 a.m. to noon at the Union Station Columbus Club in Washington DC, also marks the publication of several papers in Health [...]

Despite economic hard times, Massachusetts still shows gains in insurance coverage and access to care as a result of its 2006 state health reform. However, some of the early gains in reducing barriers to health care and improving affordability had eroded by the fall of 2008, according to Urban Institute researchers in a new study published last week on the [...]

The number of uninsured Americans is projected to increase by at least 6.9 million by 2010 — meaning 19.2 percent of nonelderly Americans would be uninsured. This is an increase of 2.0 percentage points from 2007, say Todd Gilmer and Richard Kronick of the University of California, San Diego, in a paper published May 28 on the [...]

Many more people are using mental health services and U.S. mental health spending rose 65 percent in the past decade, but there is still a disturbingly large gap between access to care and quality of mental health care received. These are some of the findings discussed in the May/June issue of Health Affairs — Mental [...]

We are pleased to announce the “most-read” Health Affairs journal articles published in 2008. The number 1 article has topped 61,000 pageviews to date. The next two articles, which were published in September, analyzed the presidential candidates’ health plans. All articles below are open to all readers for the next 2 weeks—through January 28, 2009.

Measuring [...]

Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose to $12,680 annually for family coverage in 2008 — with employees on average paying $3,354 out of their paychecks to cover their share of the cost — and the scope of coverage has changed, with many more workers now enrolled in high-deductible plans, according to a recent article published [...]

In the run-up to the election, a series of posts from economists on the right and left critiquing the presidential candidates’ health reform plans were the most-read entries for September on the Health Affairs Blog. At the top of the list, Henry Aaron looked at how Obama and McCain would cover the uninsured. In tandem [...]

For the second time in as many weeks, a respected research organization has reported sharp increases in reported difficulties with access to care for insured as well as uninsured patients. Earlier this month, in a study on underinsurance widely reported by national media, Cathy Schoen and colleagues at the Commonwealth Fund found that the share [...]

As health coverage expansion and its attendant costs are debated on the campaign trail and in Congress and state legislatures, two recent Health Affairs articles dealing with coverage issues – one on the rising number of “underinsured” Americans and the second on the state of the landmark Massachusetts reforms after their first year – have [...]

Editor’s Note: In a paper in the recently released May/June issue of Health Affairs, Donald Berwick, John Whittington, and Tom Nolan of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement lay out a strategy for improving American health care through the pursuit of the “’Triple Aim’: improving the individual experience of care; improving the health of populations; and [...]

Editor’s Note: This post was written by several of the 2007-08 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellows. These fellowships allow mid-career health services researchers and practitioners from Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom to spend up to 12 months in the United States, conducting original research and working with leading U.S. health policy experts. The lead [...]

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 [...]

For your Leap Day reading pleasure, we offer here the list of Top 10 most-read Health Affairs Blog Posts of 2007. Next up—Top 10 for January-February 2008. Additional commenting always welcome.

INSURANCE: A Closer Look At HSAs
by Uwe Reinhardt
REFORM: Musings On SiCKO, July 4th, and Visions of America
by Sarah Dine
HEALTH REFORM: Redefining Health Care
by Michael E. [...]

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 [...]

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, SiCKO, [...]

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 [...]

In a lively 45-minute session near the end of a long day, representatives from eight leading presidential candidates (Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Giuliani, McCain, Obama, Richardson, and Romney), along with Len Nichols of the New America Foundation, gathered on stage in front of more than 500 participants at Health Affairs’ 25th anniversary health policy summit, to [...]