What role will the issue of health care reform play in the 2008 presidential election? How would the candidates control rising health costs and cover the uninsured, and how will the economic downturn affect efforts to expand access? Would the candidates’ reform proposals fix the health system’s flaws? What lessons can be drawn from previous […]

Because the most glaring geographic variations in health care use have been observed in specialty and end-of-life care, policymakers have had trouble coming to terms with the work of John Wennberg and his Dartmouth colleagues. The questions the Dartmouth researchers raise about spending and quality are too disruptive, too threatening. Specialty and end-of-life care are […]

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 […]

Editor’s Note: This is the last in a series of posts in response to Jon Gabel’s article “Where Do I Send Thee? Does Physician-Ownership Affect Referral Patterns To Ambulatory Surgical Centers?,” published March 18 on the Health Affairs Web site. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) began the series, which also featured Jerry Cromwell.
The tension between commerce and professionalism is not new. Maimonides warned against allowing […]

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of posts in response to Jon Gabel’s article “Where Do I Send Thee? Does Physician-Ownership Affect Referral Patterns To Ambulatory Surgical Centers?,” published March 18 on the Health Affairs Web site. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) began the series, which will also feature Chris Cassel.
Policymakers are increasingly concerned over incentives facing physicians to refer more lucrative, well-insured […]

Editor’s Note: Today, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) kicks off a series of posts on Jon Gabel’s article “Where Do I Send Thee? Does Physician-Ownership Affect Referral Patterns To Ambulatory Surgical Centers?,” published March 18 on the Health Affairs Web site. The series will also feature posts from Jerry Cromwell and Chris Cassel.
To paraphrase the […]

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. […]

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, […]

Sometimes the most interesting discussion on a blog goes on under the radar, in comments or other off-the-grid discussion. Chris Fleming’s passing reference to research revisiting the findings of the venerable RAND Health Insurance Experiment sparked a comment by Joseph Newhouse, the Harvard economist who has published repeated analyses of the RAND experiment throughout the […]

On July 20, 2007 Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell signed into law at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing several bills included in his comprehensive health reform plan, “Prescription for Pennsylvania.” Rendell’s plan is noteworthy among recent state health reform initiatives in focusing not just on covering the 7 percent of Pennsylvanians who are uninsured, […]

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 […]

As Massachusetts and an increasing numbers of other states seek to expand health insurance coverage, the question of how to determine whether coverage is affordable is front and center. In a Health Affairs paper [1-week free access] published last week, researchers say cost considerations must include more than premiums. Linda Blumberg of the Urban Institute […]

Widely cited research suggesting that newer drugs “pay for themselves” is unreliable and should not guide policymakers until more valid research is undertaken, say Yuting Zhang and Stephen Soumerai of Harvard Medical School in a paper in the current issue of Health Affairs.

Hope and weariness rise together in the hearts of the faithful as the 2008 election season begins, with de-escalation in Iraq open for debate and a barrage of serious-looking health insurance expansion proposals reverberating on the domestic policy front. In a culture of consumer gratification, it will be risky for politicians to raise the issue […]

Is the United States on its way to a de facto single-payer system? Over the next decade, U.S. health care spending is expected to double from today’s level, reaching $4.1 trillion, with the U.S. government share projected to reach 50 percent. Federal forecasters report in an article published online today in Health Affairs [2-week free […]

In today’s Washington Post, Robert Samuelson writes:
“For decades, Americans have treated health care as if it exists in a separate economic and political world: When people need care, they should get it; costs should remain out of sight. About 60 percent of Americans receive insurance through their employers; to most workers, the full costs are […]

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 […]

Democrats prioritized price negotiations on prescription drugs, but in principle, payments to private plans are an equally salient target on the new majority’s Medicare agenda. The Republicans’ Medicare Modernization Act pays Medicare Advantage (MA) plans from about 10 to nearly 20 percent more per beneficiary than the traditional fee-for-service program spends on them. The overpayments […]

Elliott Fisher and colleagues in their provocative paper published online December 5 validated an approach to quantifying the clinical and economic performance of physician communities clustered statistically around hospitals. Fisher describes the so-called extended hospital medical staff as “hospital-associated multispecialty group practices” or “virtual organizations.” While some physician markets do indeed function as “communities,” with […]

Beltway sages expect the health agenda for the 110th Congress to be crowded, especially in comparison with other recent sessions, and can identify without great difficulty a number of issues that are likely to loom large come January. SCHIP reauthorization and Medicare’s physician payment dilemma are on most pundits’ short list of inevitable preoccupations. The […]