Pulling it Together: About Kaiser Health News May 1, 2009 Perspective There is lots of apocalyptic talk these days about the collapse of the newspaper industry and the challenges facing news organizations. There is even talk of the unimaginable, my hometown paper The Boston Globe shutting down. Surely they know that Red Sox Nation cannot exist without the Globe Sports pages.…
Pulling it Together: 19.7 April 16, 2009 Perspective Several years ago Joanne Silberner from NPR offered some advice I liked. Joanne said that the secret to effective communication was to “have a killer anecdote and a killer number.” Here is a killer number: 19.7. That’s the average number of years between major attempts at health reform since Harry…
Pulling It Together: Jobs, A Reason to Fast Track Coverage March 13, 2009 Perspective 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…
Pulling it Together: What Will Health Reform Do For Me? February 24, 2009 Perspective 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.…
Pulling it Together from Drew Altman: Multiple Agendas for Controlling Health Care Costs January 26, 2009 Perspective 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…
Window of Opportunity? January 7, 2009 Perspective 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…
Pulling It Together: The “R” Word Is Back December 9, 2008 Perspective 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…
Pulling It Together: Keeping the Health Reform Coalition Together November 7, 2008 Perspective 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…
Pulling It Together: What Do We Want Health Insurance To Be? September 26, 2008 Perspective Trends in the health insurance marketplace show substantial growth in high deductible health plans, especially among smaller firms, where 35% of workers are now covered by plans with a deductible of $1,000 or more. That’s according to our recently released employer health benefits survey, which we have been conducting now…
Pulling It Together: A Recovery Raises Expectations Too August 5, 2008 Perspective New Orleans is a city still struggling with the aftermath of Katrina and the levee breaks. The people of New Orleans feel that the nation and the federal government have largely forgotten them. Those are the results of our 2008 survey of the people of New Orleans, the second in a…
