Editor’s Note: Earlier posts by Timothy Jost provide analyses of regulations implementing provisions of the new health reform legislation governing appeals of coverage denials, coverage for preventive services, a patient bill of rights, grandfathered plans, tax exempt hospitals, the small employer tax credit, the Web portal, reinsurance for early retirees, and young adult coverage. As of January 1, 2014,  Read More →

Editor’s Note: Yesterday, the Obama administration announced interim final regulations governing the temporary Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Below, Thomas Miller and James Capretta criticize this portion of the Act and the design of the temporary health insurance pools for high-risk individuals that it creates. For more on  Read More →

According to the American College of Gastroenterology, colorectal cancer is currently the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. The colonoscopy is considered the “gold standard” for colon cancer detection. However, a new Health Affairs Web First study by researchers from RTI International demonstrates that for screening programs with limited budgets, using fecal  Read More →

Just over 1 in 4 dollars spent by the Medicare program last year was spent on someone who was in their last year of their life.  This is nothing new–the basic proportion has not changed since it was first noted in the 1970s.  Other nations that spend much less on health care nevertheless spend a similar  Read More →

Americans will soon be hearing more about a new type of entity: accountable care organizations. That’s because the health care reform legislation enacted earlier this year authorizes Medicare to contract with accountable care organizations, or ACOs, to provide care for enrollees. Accountable care organizations are designed to focus on delivering care to a particular population  Read More →

Until recently, much of the humanitarian response to disasters from the volunteer sector could be characterized as committed and compassionate – and competent as well, if sometimes just barely. From the South Asian tsunami of 2004, to the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the response has been at best uneven, with some agencies performing brilliantly and others not.  Read More →

Editor’s Note: Earlier posts by Timothy Jost provide analyses of regulations implementing provisions of the new health reform legislation governing coverage for preventive services, a patient bill of rights, grandfathered plans, tax exempt hospitals, the small employer tax credit, the Web portal, reinsurance for early retirees, and young adult coverage.  On July 22, 2010, the Departments of Health  Read More →

Over at the Workers’ Comp Insider, Julie Ferguson presents some of the best examples of recent health policy blogging in the latest edition of the Health Wonk Review. Among the posts included is Uwe Reinhardt’s Health Affairs Blog post asking whether increasing the number of health insurers would decrease health care cost growth. Other posts  Read More →

Partners HealthCare’s clinical and information system leaders are still poring over and absorbing the details of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) program for Meaningful Use of certified interoperable electronic health record technology by the nation’s hospitals and physicians.  But two things are already clear: These criteria will push provider organizations into  Read More →

As the United States begins implementing health reform, many aspects of the new law will be experienced differently depending on an individual’s current health insurance status. Joseph Newhouse, an internationally renowned Harvard economist, assessed health reform from the perspective of four different groups. He reports in a Health Affairs Web First article that the new law  Read More →

The small waiting room was packed with young mothers holding teary-eyed toddlers, older folks with resting tremors and oxygen tanks, and an obese man just stepping in from a smoke. I’m a family physician about to share my afternoon with each of them, in a working-class western Pennsylvania town. Walking quickly through the room on  Read More →

The International AIDS Conference is currently taking place in Vienna. One of the major themes of the conference, voiced by such notables as Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, is the need for the fight against HIV/AIDS to become more efficient. In the face of declining resources, and more competitors for those resources, there is simply no other choice.  Read More →

What does the Massachusetts experience tell us about the prospects for success of national health reform? That’s the subject of an ongoing debate that relies heavily on research published in Health Affairs by Urban Institute researchers. The pessimistic view on Massachusetts. In a column in today’s Washington Post, Robert Samuelson cites a June 2010 Health Affairs article by Sharon  Read More →

As the annual August congressional recess approaches, one of the issues still to be resolved is whether to extend into the first six months of 2011 a temporary increase in federal contributions to states for Medicaid funding. This provision was enacted as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which prevented anticipated  Read More →

As the nation continues to wage war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) looms as an ever-more pressing issue. Earlier this week, the Obama administration made it easier for veterans to obtain disability benefits and treatment for PTSD by eliminating the requirement that they document a specific attack or other incident that  Read More →