Filling the need for trusted information on national health issues
Pulling It Together: Jobs, A Reason to Fast Track Coverage
The two big topics in Washington right now are the economy and health care. I’ve written before about how the two are linked, and in particular about how among the everyday economic problems people are having, paying for health care is a big one. But the latest numbers out from…
Policy Insights Read PostPulling it Together: What Will Health Reform Do For Me?
There is one poll number that may be more important to watch than any other if we have a big debate about health reform: The percentage of Americans who think that they or their families would be better off if the president and the Congress enacted major health reform legislation.…
Policy Insights Read PostPulling it Together from Drew Altman: Multiple Agendas for Controlling Health Care Costs
In what would be a domestic policy trifecta, we may be headed for interconnected big debates about economic recovery, entitlement programs and health reform. A core issue in the entitlement and health reform debates is the problem of rising health care costs. President Obama, now apparently fully briefed on the…
Policy Insights Read PostWindow of Opportunity?
Beginning this Spring, between expected approval of an economic stimulus package and the start of campaigning for the midterm election, there will be a rare window of opportunity for passage of major health reform legislation. History suggests that momentum can be lost if policymakers do not move quickly to seize…
Policy Insights Read PostPulling It Together: The “R” Word Is Back
Longer ago than I care to admit, I got my start in health policy at M.I.T. when I wrote a book about health care regulation. The book was about a long forgotten attempt to rationalize the health care system through an elaborate health planning program set up in the seventies under the National…
Policy Insights Read PostPulling It Together: Keeping the Health Reform Coalition Together
We could be headed for a new schism in the debate about health reform. Not the familiar gulf between advocates of the market and government, or the predictable one between deficit hawks and spenders, but a new one that crosses traditional partisan and ideological lines between advocates of long-term reform of the health care delivery…
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