Pulling it Together: An Actuarial Rorschach Test
Drew Altman, Larry Levitt, Gary Claxton My colleagues have worked on this column with me and I invited them to join me as authors.
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Drew Altman, Larry Levitt, Gary Claxton My colleagues have worked on this column with me and I invited them to join me as authors.
Tuesday, February 2nd marked a milestone of sorts in the health reform debate: there was no story on health reform in the New York Times (national edition).
The Massachusetts special election has roiled the political world and profoundly affected the prospects for health reform just when it looked like passage was a lock.
Almost a year into an often acrimonious health reform debate, we stand poised for near certain passage of historic health reform legislation. Yet, somewhat perplexingly, there's now talk about whether a law that has not even been enacted might actually be repealed and reporters have been calling asking what the chances of repeal may be.
With so much of the focus on the political dynamics of the health reform debate and a few hot button issues, I wonder if we have lost track of what propelled health care to the top domestic issue in the first place—people’s concerns about paying for health care in the middle of a deep recession.
In inside circles of the health reform debate there has been criticism of the President for not weighing in earlier and publicly on the details of health reform legislation.
For as long as I have been in the field, there have been two dominant schools of thought about how to control health care costs.
When I was a graduate student at MIT my adviser Jeffrey Pressman was a great political scientist who had just written the seminal book on program implementation.
For many years now the news media has served as the public's number one source of information on important issues like health reform. People rely on the news media to help them wade through claims and counter claims, understand how policy options will affect them and come to judgment on complex issues.
This week we put out our annual benchmark survey of employer health coverage and costs. Two numbers jumped off the pages. The first number was the average cost of a family health insurance policy in 2009: $13,375.
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