Health Affairs

At the heart of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health care reforms are the premium tax credits, which will extend health insurance coverage to 18 million lower and middle-income Americans.  The idea of using tax credits to purchase private health insurance for the uninsured is one of a number of the historically conservative policy positions... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: For more on Rick Brown’s life and work, see Chris Hafner-Eaton’s Health Affairs Blog post and Lee-Lee Prina’s post on Health Affairs’ GrantWatch Blog. E. Richard (Rick) Brown, a nationally recognized public health leader who advocated for health care reform and pioneered the collection and broad dissemination of health survey data to influence... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: For more on Rick Brown’s life and work, see Gerald Kominski’s Health Affairs Blog post and Lee-Lee Prina’s post on Health Affairs’ GrantWatch Blog. I humbly write what cathartically emanates from me regarding UCLA’s Dr. E. Richard Brown, who passed away on April 20, 2012. Rick Brown, as he was known to most... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: On April 10, Charles Blahous released a paper on the fiscal consequences of the Affordable Care Act. Below Len Nichols responds to the arguments Blahous raised in the April 10 paper and offers his own views on the ACA’s fiscal consequences. In related Health Affairs Blog posts, Paul Van de Water responds to... Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court illustrated fundamental differences in attitudes about what Justice Kennedy described as “the relationship of the individual to the government”.  Tr. 11.  As Dahlia Lithwick points out, the arguments also are about the relationship between the individual and other people.

“Reading between the lines” of the Supreme Court arguments seems to be everyone’s favorite pastime this week.  For health lawyers, these three days are heady times, a chance to revel in exquisitely crafted briefs and complex legal theories, consummately argued in a way that lifts the entire profession.  Rarely has the public paid such rapt... Read the rest of this entry »

Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan is frequently hailed for his fiscal responsibility and political courage.   After all, the Congressman has now put forward not one but two budget plans that offer “a blueprint for safeguarding America from the perils of debt, doubt and decline” and take on sensitive issues like Medicare.   Ryan seems to have emerged... Read the rest of this entry »

On March 12, 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services promulgated final regulations governing the establishment of the American Health Benefit Exchanges.  The exchanges are at the heart of the Affordable Care Act strategy for making health insurance available and affordable to millions of Americans in the individual (nongroup) and small group markets. The... Read the rest of this entry »

Last Thursday’s Republican Presidential Debate in Florida included a lively, but not always accurate, exchange on health reform in Massachusetts.  In particular, Senator Santorum reported that one in four Massachusetts residents were going without needed care because of high costs; he also implied that the share of residents choosing to pay the fine for failing... Read the rest of this entry »

Massachusetts’s health reform bill, which provided the template for the federal Affordable Care Act, went into effect in 2006. In a statewide survey taken in 2010, 94.2 percent of the state’s nonelderly (19–64) residents reported being covered, a significant increase over the 86.6 percent estimate of 2006. The survey is reported in a Health Affairs... Read the rest of this entry »

On November 8, 2011, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) solicited the public for feedback on Medicare’s controversial coverage with evidence development (CED) policy. Although CMS did not finalize the CED policy until 2006, the agency first applied the CED concept in 1995 through a national coverage determination (NCD) on lung volume reduction... Read the rest of this entry »

As every reader knows, the Supreme Court has agreed to consider challenges that have been brought to the constitutionality of two provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by twenty-six states, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, and individual plaintiffs.  The Court has scheduled the case for five and a half hours of oral arguments... Read the rest of this entry »

With primary care medicine facing ever increasing pressures—fewer doctors to treat more patients and a continual maze of restrictions on reimbursement—primary care practitioners are trying to diagnose and treat obesity with one hand tied behind their backs. The result, unfortunately, is that for what is likely the nation’s costliest disease, strains on coverage have been... Read the rest of this entry »

With apologies to my more creative predecessors as Health Wonk Review hosts, there’s no theme today. (After all, how could one top Alistair Cookie?) I will get right to the great posts in this week’s edition. Costs And Premiums. At Managed Care Matters, Joe Paduda explores an apparent disconnect: flat medical costs coupled with rising... Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesday, September 28 was a busy day at the Supreme Court clerk’s office. It had been widely expected that there would be a major pleading filed with the clerk in an Affordable Care Act challenge, as the response of the United States to a certiorari petition in the Sixth Circuit’s Thomas More case, which had... Read the rest of this entry »

Total premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage have reached $15,073, up 9 percent from last year, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust reported yesterday in their annual Employer Health Benefits Survey. This sharp rise comes after a string of comparatively mild increases. Last year, family premiums increased 3 percent, after... Read the rest of this entry »

Steadily rising health care costs are exacting a heavy financial toll on many families, leaving them with less and less disposable income while increasing the federal deficit, according to a study in the recently released September issue of Health Affairs.  From 1999 to 2009, an average American family of four saw its annual income increase... Read the rest of this entry »

One of the great advances for people with disabilities under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is its coverage standards for the individual and small group markets.  To be sure, the Act’s best known provisions where disability is concerned are those that bar insurers from totally denying access for people with higher health care... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: For more Health Affairs Blog coverage of the new Census Bureau health insurance data, see Nina Owcharenko’s post. Most of the newspaper coverage of the just-released Census Bureau data on health insurance coverage has focused changes in coverage between 2009 and 2010.  Since the advent of the Great Recession, the reduction in health... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: For more Health Affairs Blog coverage of the new Census Bureau health insurance data, see Henry Aaron’s post. In its yearly survey of health insurance coverage, the U.S. Census Bureau published figures that underscore the trend toward greater dependence on government for coverage. The percentage of Americans on government health programs continues to... Read the rest of this entry »