Health Affairs

Flu vaccination rates among nursing home residents have improved slightly, particularly for blacks. Nonetheless, overall vaccination rates remain well below the 90 percent target for high-quality care, and black nursing home residents remain less likely to be vaccinated than whites, say Shubing Cai of Brown University and coauthors in the October issue of Health Affairs. The article [...]

A column by New York Times columnist David Brooks titled “Death and Budgets,” read in combination with a recent report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“Medicare Hospices that Focus on Nursing Facility Residents”), makes painfully clear how urgently America must rethink the way [...]

A new Health Affairs Web First study finds that increased choice among Medicare Advantage plans leads to increased enrollment in the program among elderly Americans, but only when beneficiaries are choosing among 15 or fewer plans. When Medicare beneficiaries have a choice of 15 to 30 private plans, increased choice does not result in increased Medicare Advantage [...]

On July 7, 2011, Health Affairs will unveil its July 2011 issue, “New Directions In Systems Innovations.” The issue explores ongoing innovations in health care organization, delivery and financing across a broad front – from Vermont’s recent passage of single payer legislation, to new responsibilities for hospital boards of trustees as a consequence of the [...]

On July 7, 2011, Health Affairs will unveil its July 2011 issue, “New Directions In Systems Innovations.” The issue explores ongoing innovations in health care organization, delivery and financing across a broad front – from Vermont’s recent passage of single payer legislation, to new responsibilities for hospital boards of trustees as a consequence of the [...]

If you’re traveling over the long weekend, you’ll want to take along some reading material. While some might reach for a good novel by John Grisham or Dan Brown, the health policy blogs in this edition of the Health Wonk Review tackle equally compelling mysteries. Was the Medicare Trustees report really that gloomy? If Workers [...]

The latest Health Policy Brief from Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation examines the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Plan, a voluntary, publicly administered insurance program enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. It is designed to help people should they become disabled and need long-term services and [...]

Health Affairs today adds a new Medical Education recording to its free collection of Narrative Matters essays on iTunes U. The account was written by Fitzhugh Mullan, a physician and clinical professor of pediatrics and public health at the George Washington University and the original editor of the “Narrative Matters” section. The essay, “Me And [...]

President Obama has begun his campaign for re-election in 2012.  Several Republicans have declared their intention to consider the possibility of running.   Meanwhile, implementation of health care reform proceeds slowly, with threats of defunding and legal action scuttling alongside to keep up.  Policy debates about accountable care organizations, medical homes, and other attempts to bring [...]

The challenge of reining in the rising costs of the Medicare Program is particularly thorny because it confronts a recalcitrant societal tension between the necessity for cost control and the value of open-ended technology use for life extension in the later years. That tension is becoming more deeply entrenched because a growing number of older [...]

Health Affairs has launched The Care Span, a new ongoing section of the journal, in its March 2011 edition. The Care Span will examine the topics of aging and disability, not as isolated experiences but as part of the full span of life. Toward this end, the journal aims to bring together the best current [...]

Health Affairs today added a podcast about medical errors to its free collection of podcasts of Narrative Matters essays on iTunes U. The essay was written by Michael Rowe, an associate clinical professor in the Yale School of Medicine. Titled “The Rest Is Silence,” it appeared in the July/August 2002 edition of Health Affairs. Health Affairs offers [...]

For the second time, a proposal to pay health care providers to counsel Medicare beneficiaries on future care options and end-of-life planning has fallen victim to the politics of the health care debate. The House included language to pay physicians and other providers for such “advance care planning” in its version of the Affordable Care Act, last [...]

Which groups of women, if any, should get regular mammograms to screen for breast cancer? This question has been the subject of passionate debate. For example, when the United States Preventive Services Task Force recommended that women without special risk factors begin regular mammograms at age 50, rather than 40, it unleashed an uproar that threatened [...]

On July 7, Robert Butler died of leukemia. Butler was the founding director of the National Institute on Aging, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and one of the nation’s leading authorities on aging and geriatrics. This post, by William Hazzard, Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington and Director of Geriatrics and Extended Care for the VA [...]

Editor’s note: Earlier this summer, on July 7, Robert Butler died of leukemia. Butler was the founding director of the National Institute on Aging, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and one of the nation’s leading authorities on aging and geriatrics. With the essay below by Christine Cassel, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine, Health [...]

Editor’s Note: Timothy Jost, the author of the post below, analyzed the insurance and revenue provisions of the President’s Proposal for Health Care Reform in an earlier post. Public debate concerning the pending congressional health reform legislation has largely focused on insurance reforms, which were discussed in my first post on the president’s latest reform proposal.  But the [...]

Editor’s Note: For more on informal caregivers and related issues, see Bridging Troubled Waters: Family Caregivers, Transitions, And Long-Term Care and other articles in the January issue of Health Affairs, titled Advancing Long-Term Services & Supports.  The primary focus of this analysis is to examine trends and key findings for caregivers of persons 50+, with an [...]

Here in DC we’re bracing for the storm of the century — snow storm, that is.  What better time to catch up on some health policy reading? We list here the top 10 most-read posts from January on Health Affairs Blog. Topics cover health reform, health care costs, the mammography guidelines controversy, and more. And [...]

We offer readers the annual “top 10″ list of most-read posts from Health Affairs Blog. Health reform topped the list in 2009. If you missed any of these posts, here’s your chance to catch up on your reading. Propaganda And Prejudice Distort The Health Reform Debate by Merton Bernstein Nurse Shortage Eases Under Recession by [...]