Today’s new Health Wonk Review rounds up posts from the political (would an Obama presidency energize young adults to demand entitlement reform?) to the analytical (John Wennberg’s practice variation work, the Medicare SGR debate, and more). This latest compendium of the best of health policy blogging is hosted today by Merrill Goozner of GoozNews, with great insights from […]

A new Health Wonk Review posted today provides some “serious wonkery” from the President’s State of the Union to presidential campaign politics and health reform. David Williams of Health Business blog is the host of this edition of the biweekly roundup of the best of health policy blogging. He offers a great snapshot and deftly tackles the business […]

Editor’s Note: Economists Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation and Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution have different worldviews when it comes to how best to allocate scarce health care resources, but on one subject they have come to strongly agree: a way to end the political impasse in Washington [free access article] and make […]

David Harlow has posted a terrific Health Wonk Review over on HealthBlawg. He takes his turn at hosting the biweekly round-up of the best of health policy blogging and gives the write-up a “holiday lights” twist. He illuminates for readers some great posts on health reform on the campaign trail and beyond.

Now that it’s September and Congress is back in session, it’s time to prepare for the September policy showdown on reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Last month Health Affairs Blog invited policy experts with wide-ranging views to set out the hot-button issues–such as the tobacco tax funding mechanism–and explain the politics. These posts […]

This morning the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the number of uninsured Americans jumped to 47 million in 2006, up from 44.8 million in 2005. In percentage terms, there were 15.8 percent of Americans without insurance in 2006, up from 15.3 percent in 2005. This also represents the sixth year in a row that the […]

In a wistful and wise editorial in the August 3 Washington Post, David Broder mourned what the SCHIP debate had become–an ugly polarizing event.
Many commentators have wondered how a bipartisan program passed during the waning years of the Clinton administration under a Republican-dominated Congress descended into an ugly scrimmage beset by cries of socialized medicine, […]

The numbers are in. Last month on the Health Affairs Blog Senior Editor Sarah Dine’s musings on SiCKO was the most-read post of the month and the third-most-read post since the launch of the blog. Only Linda Aiken’s mythbusting post on the nurse shortage and Uwe Reinhardt’s closer look at HSAs have ranked higher. Listed […]

Besides short-term budgetary or political advantage, what considerations enter into policy pronouncements made by health care decisionmakers? Does history enter into it? And do they really ask themselves if what they know to be true actually has a factual basis?
A recent paper posted on the British History & Policy web site considers this question in […]

Today’s edition of the Health Wonk Review, hosted by Jay Norris of Colorado Health Insurance Insider, leads off with posts from around the health policy blogosphere on Michael Moore’s controversial movie, SiCKO. Want to know what John Goodman thinks of the movie? Read on. The Health Wonk Review is a biweekly compendium of the best of […]

Michael Moore closes his movie SiCKO with a quotation from Alexis de Tocqueville. His paean to French social welfare benefits perhaps has to end with a Frenchman’s unique view of America, but a more appropriate lament for the state of America’s vision of ourselves should come from an earlier source, from the pen of one […]

What happens when a government agency in charge of assessing the effectiveness of medical interventions crunches numbers and tells pharmaceutical companies their drugs are just too expensive? Sometimes, the government gets a better deal.
Twice last week, the much-feared National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in England and Wales was a factor in drug […]

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.

As the health care reform debate proceeds, one battleground is what to make of the results in states like Maine and Tennessee, where pioneering efforts to expand coverage have encountered difficulties. Today’s New York Times has a thorough front-page article on Maine Governor John Baldacci’s (D) efforts to revamp the Dirigo health plan, which was […]

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 […]