Health Affairs

On Tuesday, June 5, Health Affairs will hold a briefing to discuss its June 2012 issue, “Focus On The Care Span For The Elderly And Disabled.” The volume explores a wide range of topics — from avoidable hospital admissions and readmissions, to coordination of care for dual eligibles, to reforming Medicare payment for skilled nursing... Read the rest of this entry »

A belated tip of the hat to Hank Stern’s  Health Wonk Review at Insure Blog. Hank offers a nice collection of posts, including Diane Meier’s Health Affairs Blog post on Amy Berman’s Narrative Matters essay and overcoming barriers to palliative care. Happy reading!  

Editor’s note: You can hear Amy Berman discuss her April Health Affairs Narrative Matters essay at the recent release event for the April issue. You can also join Amy tomorrow (May 1) at noon for live online chat hosted by the Washington Post, which will also be publishing an abridged version of her essay. In... Read the rest of this entry »

Tomorrow, Thursday April 12, Health Affairs will hold a briefing to unveil its April 2012 issue, “Issues In Cancer Care: Value, Costs & Quality.” The volume explores a range of cancer-related topics, with the centerpiece a cluster of articles on assessing the value of high-cost cancer treatments. Please join us for the briefing at the... Read the rest of this entry »

The United States spends more on cancer care than European countries. However, a study published in the newly released April issue of Health Affairs suggests that investment also generates a greater “value” for US patients, who typically live nearly two years longer than their European counterparts. Tomas Philipson, the Daniel Levin Chair in Public Policy... Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday, April 12, Health Affairs will hold a briefing to unveil its April 2012 issue, “Issues In Cancer Care: Value, Costs & Quality.” The volume explores a range of cancer-related topics, with the centerpiece a cluster of articles on assessing the value of high-cost cancer treatments.  The cluster received funding support from Bristol-Myers Squibb;... Read the rest of this entry »

Spurred by the nation’s federal deficit, unsustainable healthcare costs, and other economic challenges, America’s healthcare system must change from a fee-for-service to a fee-for-value system, challenging all industry participants to make healthcare more efficient, effective, accessible, and affordable. While patients, employers, and payers clearly benefit from lower costs, the fee-for-service system in place since Medicare’s... Read the rest of this entry »

In June of 2011, I flew to Washington, D.C. to say good-bye to my friend, Alvin.  I wanted to be there with him and his family during his peaceful passage from this life.  Unfortunately, his end was not peaceful.  It was a nightmare because he, like too many patients being transferred from one level of... Read the rest of this entry »

“It is well established now that one can in fact improve the quality of health care and reduce the costs at the same time.” That statement by Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief Susan Dentzer summarized the message of a recent event sponsored by the journal, the ABIM Foundation, and the California HealthCare Foundation. The briefing was intended... Read the rest of this entry »

Tomorrow, October 19, Health Affairs, along with co-sponsors the ABIM Foundation, the California HealthCare Foundation and the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, will present ideas endorsed by leading physicians for Saving Money and Improving Patient Care in Medicare.  A list of speakers and other information is available in this earlier post.  WHEN:                  Wednesday, October... Read the rest of this entry »

The congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction has been charged with finding ways to decrease federal budget deficits by at least $1.2 trillion between fiscal 2012 and 2021. There is broad recognition among policy makers that savings in Medicare should be part of the solution.  Happily, there are measures that would not only save... Read the rest of this entry »

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... Read the rest of this entry »

In the newest Health Affairs Narrative Matters essay, prominent journalist Eleanor Clift writes about her husband Tom Brazaitis and his death from metastatic cancer at age 64. Clift describes the multiple ways in which she and her husband benefited from hospice care, in which Brazaitis spent the last four months of his life. Clift uses... Read the rest of this entry »

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... Read the rest of this entry »

While Congress’ recent efforts to repeal the healthcare reform legislation signed by President Obama last year may have been ‘dead on arrival,’ efforts to dismantle the bill continue, and likely will for months to come. Rather than simply repeat the same battles again and again, legislators on both sides of the aisle might also take... Read the rest of this entry »

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... Read the rest of this entry »

Major changes lie ahead in the structure and delivery of long-term health care services and supports, accelerated by the Affordable Care Act. Among these are expanded options for people to receive services in their homes and communities; care coordination for the disabled population dually enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid; and the creation of a new... Read the rest of this entry »

Below, Kavita Patel, former director of policy for the White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, discusses President Obama’s State of the Union address and House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Republican response. See other posts on this topic by Len Nichols and Joseph Antos.  The Constitution mandates that the President “from time to time... Read the rest of this entry »

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... Read the rest of this entry »

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... Read the rest of this entry »