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 […]

In May 2007, Indiana enacted comprehensive health reform in the form of the Indiana Check-Up Plan and its centerpiece, the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP). After intense negotiations, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services granted Indiana the 1115b waiver required for the plan to go into effect in December 2007, and within three months over […]

UnitedHealth Group officials may have been laying protective cover for themselves when they attributed poor first-quarter earnings to a sagging economy last week. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t also true, as United said, that business is bad because the company’s products are getting too expensive for a growing number of workers and companies. Coming within […]

In interviews with Health Affairs, government ministers in Germany and the Netherlands talk up market-oriented refinements to their universal health insurance systems for the future. But the news from Europe isn’t all happy: an unsettling survey in the United Kingdom finds that some physicians believe that the market will unravel the government-owned and -operated National […]

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 […]

Editor’s Note: This post continues the conversation in the Health Affairs Blog roundtable on the unsuccessful health reform effort in California. Below, Lucien Wulsin responds to the ideas expressed in the first round of California posts, which appeared last Wednesday and Thursday. You can also read and comment on response posts appearing today from Rick […]

Editor’s Note: This post continues the conversation in the Health Affairs Blog roundtable on the unsuccessful health reform effort in California. Below, Patricia Lynch responds to the ideas expressed in the first round of California posts, which appeared last Wednesday and Thursday. You can also read and comment on response posts appearing today from Rick Curtis […]

Editor’s Note: This post continues the conversation in the Health Affairs Blog roundtable on the unsuccessful health reform effort in California. Below, Ed Neuschler and Rick Curtis respond to the ideas expressed in the first round of California posts, which appeared last Wednesday and Thursday. You can also read and comment on response posts appearing […]

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth post in a Health Affairs Blog roundtable on the unsuccessful health care reform effort in California. Rick Curtis and Ed Neuschler, Patricia Lynch, and Rick Kronick are also participating in the roundtable. Follow-up comments from Curtis and Neuschler, Lynch, and Wulsin are posted.
Nearly 20 percent of Californians under age sixty-five […]

Editor’s Note: This is the third post in a Health Affairs Blog roundtable on the unsuccessful health care reform effort in California. Rick Curtis and Ed Neuschler, Patricia Lynch, and Lucien Wulsin are also participating in the roundtable. Follow-up comments from Curtis and Neuschler, Lynch, and Wulsin are posted.
A lot of heat, if very little […]

Editor’s Note: This is the second post in a Health Affairs Blog roundtable on the unsuccessful health care reform effort California. Rick Curtis and Ed Neuschler, Lucien Wulsin, and Rick Kronick are also participating in the roundtable. Follow-up comments from Curtis and Neuschler, Wulsin, and Lynch are posted.
Kaiser Permanente views the failure to put the health reform legislation developed by Gov. […]

Editor’s Note: This is the first post in a Health Affairs Blog roundtable on the unsuccessful health care reform effort in California. Patricia Lynch, Lucien Wulsin, and Rick Kronick are also participating in the roundtable. Follow-up comments from Curtis and Neuschler, Lynch, and Wulsin are posted.
Although stymied by economic woes and governance constraints unique to California, the […]

A report highlighting the failure of many regional health information exchanges was Health Affairs’ most-read article in December. Then in January, the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) published another discouraging assessment on the progress of these collaboratives and of the national infrastructure envisaged in the 2004 presidential order that called for wiring the health system in […]

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 […]

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.

A recent Health Affairs article by Columbia University’s Sherry Glied and coauthors is figuring prominently in the debate over whether to require individuals to purchase health insurance as part of the proposals to achieve universal coverage. In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton (NY) and former Sen. John Edwards (NC) have […]

Editor’s Note: This post was written by the 2007-08 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellows. The lead authors are Andreas Gerber and Rhema Vaithianathan. Additional authors include Kalipso Chalkidou, Richard Gleave, Peter Hockey, Geraint Lewis, Ruth McDonald, Neil MacKinnon, Peter McNair, Claudia Sanmartin, and Stephanie Stock.
While policymakers in the U.S. have long recognized the benefits of looking overseas for […]

Massachusetts took our breath away with the elegant political balance of its reform solution — whether the state’s universal coverage plan turns out to be implementable or not. California, on the other hand, leaves us scratching our heads: What is going on out there? 
Ultimately, it is a state that governs by referendum, and the fate […]

What we’ve read in recent headlines was: 47 million Americans lack health insurance! Back on page 5, President Bush and Congress fight over reauthorizing the Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which augments Medicaid coverage for children (and expires at the end of September). Looking at the data that produced the headlines makes it clearer how hard health reform is […]

Many of Washington policymakers and health policy experts are returning from August vacations to find that the month was not as quiet as expected. On Friday evening, August 17th, the Administration issued a major new directive on children’s health coverage that effectively eliminates SCHIP for children above 250 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), […]