The Effects of the Economic Recession on Communities of Color July 30, 2009 Issue Brief This issue brief examines some of the challenges associated with employment, daily life and access to health care among racial minorities, who tend to be disproportionately affected by many of the consequences of economic hard times. High unemployment rates, coupled with vast differences in savings and wealth, have left many…
Show Me the Money: Options for Financing Health Reform July 2, 2009 Event The Alliance for Health Reform and The Commonwealth Fund co-sponsored this event to examine options to finance coverage expansions and reforms to both the delivery system and insurance markets. Panelists address the following questions: What options hold the most promise? How do the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Office…
CHIP TIPS: New Federal Funding Available to Cover Immigrant Children and Pregnant Women June 30, 2009 Issue Brief This brief examines a new option under the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 that allows states to receive federal funds for providing Medicaid and CHIP coverage to lawfully residing immigrant children and pregnant women regardless of when they entered the country. Previously, states had been prohibited from…
Medicare Part D Update: Lessons Learned and Unfinished Business July 1, 2009 Report Enacted in 2003, Medicare’s Part D prescription drug benefit reflected an unprecedented and controversial new approach for Medicare, relying exclusively on private plans to provide health coverage and including an unusual gap in coverage. This analysis by Kaiser researchers examines in detail how the new model has worked since its…
Pulling it Together: The Sleeper in Health Reform June 16, 2009 Perspective The health reform legislation currently being crafted on Capitol Hill is undeniably complex. To oversimplify slightly it can be boiled down into four parts: coverage (subsidies for private coverage and Medicaid expansions); delivery and payment reforms; insurance market reforms and regulations; and prevention, with each broad category containing a range…
Putting Women’s Health Care Disparities On The Map: Examining Racial and Ethnic Disparities at the State Level May 31, 2009 Report This Kaiser Family Foundation report documents the persistence of disparities between white women and women of color across the country. It provides a rare and comprehensive state-level look at disparities among women of different races and ethnicities on a broad range of indicators of health and well-being, including rates of diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, AIDS and cancer, and access to health insurance and health screenings.
Closing the Long-Term Care Funding Gap: The Challenge of Private Long-Term Care Insurance May 30, 2009 Issue Brief This policy brief from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured examines the fundamentals of private long-term care insurance. It describes the results of a study exploring how consumers buy policies, how much policies cost and how they work, and what regulations exist to protect consumers. It also discusses…
Toplines: September/October 2005 Kaiser Health Poll Report November 1, 2005 Poll Finding These toplines provide the complete survey questions and responses to the September/October 2005 Kaiser Health Poll Report, a bimonthly report designed to provide key tracking information on public opinion about health care topics to journalists, policymakers and the general public. It includes a series of questions on how the public…
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…
Eroding Access among Nonelderly Adults with Chronic Conditions: Ten Years of Change July 1, 2008 Report A Kaiser study published as a Health Affairs web-exclusive article finds the number of working-age adults who have major chronic conditions grew by 25 percent between 1997 and 2006 and those without health coverage in this group experienced substantial erosion in access to health care. The study also reveals that…