Archive for the 'Consumers' Category

Health Care At The Movies: The Diving Bell And The Butterfly

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

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, […]

U.S. HEALTH CARE: International Scholars Experience Our System — What They Would Change

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007

Editor’s Note: This is part two of a two-part blog by several of the 2006-2007 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellows. Part one, which ran yesterday, describes the extent to which these international scholars felt able to make meaningful choices in their interactions with the American health care system. In part two below, the authors propose changes […]

U.S. HEALTH CARE: International Scholars Experience Our System — What They Found

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007

Editor’s Note: This is part one of a two-part blog by several of the 2006-2007 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellows. The post below describes the extent to which these international scholars felt able to make meaningful choices in their interactions with the American health care system. In part two of their blog, which will appear on […]

EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE: The Difficult But Critical Step Of Adding Cost

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

In an interview published online at Health Affairs [2-week free access], David Eddy, founder and medical director of Archimedes Inc. in Aspen, Colorado, discusses evidence-based medicine (EBM) with Sean Tunis, founder and director of the Center for Medical Technology Policy in San Francisco. Archimedes was founded to improve the quality and efficiency of health care […]

CONSUMERS: Who Makes The Risk-Benefit Tradeoff Decision, And Why?

Thursday, May 31st, 2007

Why are consumers encouraged — indeed virtually required — to make choices among Medicare Part D plans, but discouraged from making choices about airbags, and prohibited from choosing to accept higher wages in return for accepting certain health risks in the workplace? Why are physicians and patients allowed to take on the risks associated with […]

BLOG: Health Wonk Review On Candidates, Consumers, And More

Thursday, May 31st, 2007

Consumer-directed plans “pre-lash,” presidential candidates’ health reform plans, and more are discussed on the latest edition of the Health Wonk Review. This round of the biweekly health policy blog overview is hosted by Richard Eskow of The Sentinel Effect.

CONSUMERS: The Blogosphere Debates Convenience Clinics

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007

The spread of convenience clinics—or “McClinics”—has been debated across the health care blogosphere in recent weeks, stemming in part from Wal-Mart’s announcement that it plans to open hundreds in coming years. Yesterday, the subject was the question of the day on the Wall Street Journal’s health blog (sparked by a Journal op-ed by Grace-Marie Turner, president […]

QUALITY: Payment Debates At The World Health Care Congress

Tuesday, April 24th, 2007

The Washington Convention Center was abuzz as nearly 2,000 health industry and policy wonks gathered for the 4th annual World Health Care Congress. The standard policy topics of cost, quality, and coverage were up for debate, along with competition, effectiveness, transparency, and, of course, reform. For comprehensive blogging on the event, check out the official […]

REFORM: Hamilton Project Enters The Health Policy Debate

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007

The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution was founded to advance opportunity and prosperity through broad-based growth, economic security, and effective government. Perhaps no issue is more important in all of these regards than health care.
Today we are releasing three specific proposals to promote affordability and effectiveness in health care. This summer we’ll release several […]

BLOG: Health Wonk Review #24

Thursday, January 25th, 2007

It’s Health Wonk Review week! Oh, and the State of the Union was delivered, too. Even though the deadline for entries to this edition of the best of health policy blogging was 9 am the morning after, many bloggers were already debating the president’s foray into health reform.
The President’s plan. Robert Laszewski on the new Health […]

POLITICS: Election Post-Mortem: Build The Foundation

Monday, November 13th, 2006

Amid all the post-election crystal-gazing, one of the few safe inferences so far is that voter worries about health care were a powerful source of discontent; and that if the war in Iraq de-escalates over the next two years, affordable access to care is likely to emerge as a major issue in the 2008 elections. […]

HEALTH REFORM: U.S. Pluralism vs. International “Systemness”

Tuesday, November 7th, 2006

Two kinds of American exceptionalism emerged from last week’s release of the Commonwealth Fund’s International Health Policy Survey, which focused on primary care and was published November 2 on the Health Affairs Web site.

COVERAGE: Protecting Chronically Ill In World Of Consumer-Directed Insurance

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

How might the chronically ill be safeguarded in a world of high-deductible, “consumer-directed” health insurance? During an October 2005 roundtable, cosponsored by Health Affairs and the California HealthCare Foundation, some answers were provided by two dozen leaders from the insurance, clinical, purchaser, consumer, and regulatory communities. Jill Yegian, the CHCF health insurance director, presents the […]

COVERAGE: Consumer-Directed Plans Can Save Money, But Quality Effects Uncertain

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

Early returns suggest that “consumer-directed” health plans can restrain health care costs and utilization, but whether these high-deductible plans can accomplish this without deterring consumers from seeking needed care is still up for debate. So state economist Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin and colleagues at RAND in an article [2-week free access] published today on the Health […]

HEALTH REFORM: Consumers and Competition

Wednesday, October 11th, 2006

Michael Porter and Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg’s overall vision for health care delivery is an archipelago of free-standing Integrated Practice Units (IPUs), each focused on the total cycle of care for a medical condition. This contrasts to the view of competition among integrated delivery systems (IDSs) [2-week free access] that organize or arrange comprehensive health services […]


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