Health Affairs Article: Medicaid Expansion Under Health Reform May Increase Service Use and Improve Access For Low-Income Adults With Diabetes January 1, 2012 Issue Brief This analysis finds that Medicaid’s role in financing diabetes care will grow when many low-income uninsured people with diabetes become eligible for Medicaid as the program expansions under the Affordable Care Act in 2014. Adult Medicaid beneficiaries with diabetes had annual per person health expenditures more than three times higher…
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…
Massachusetts Health Care Reform: Six Years Later May 1, 2012 Issue Brief In 2006, then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed Massachusetts’ comprehensive health reform designed to provide near-universal health insurance coverage for state residents. Building on a long history of health reform efforts, the state embarked on an ambitious plan to promote shared individual, employer, and government responsibility. This brief examines Massachusetts’ experience with…
Pulling It Together: Moving Away From Employer Based Coverage: Don’t Forget Public Opinion June 25, 2008 Perspective One of the underlying big issues in the unfolding health reform debate is whether most Americans should continue to get insurance through work where they get it today, or purchase it themselves in the individual private health insurance marketplace. Senator McCain promotes moving to individual insurance and having individuals rather…
Pulling It Together: Predictions May 20, 2011 Perspective I usually don’t make predictions, unless they are backed up by the kind of statistical modeling we often produce. But here are three predictions I am confident about that form the basis of this latest column. GROUP HEALTH INSURANCE PREMIUMS WILL CONTINUE TO RISE AT HISTORICALLY MODERATE LEVELS, AT LEAST…
Pulling It Together: Predicting the Future May 4, 2010 Perspective A fair amount of attention was given recently to projections made by the Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) about the new health reform law, and how they compare to previous estimates by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). No doubt the various projections will be…
Pulling it Together: REPOR(t) May 26, 2010 Perspective In today’s column I investigate a somewhat lighter topic than my last column on micro-simulation modeling: What was the impact of shows like Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report on the health reform debate? Who among us has not wondered about the answer to this…
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…
Chartpack: Kaiser Health Tracking Poll — November 2009 November 1, 2009 Poll Finding This document contains the chartpack from the November Health Tracking Poll. The survey was designed and analyzed by public opinion researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation and was conducted November 5 through November 12, 2009, among a nationally representative random sample of 1,203 adults ages 18 and older. Telephone interviews…
Insurer Rebates under the Medical Loss Ratio: 2012 Estimates April 1, 2012 Report Beginning in 2011, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires insurance plans to pay out a minimum percentage of premium dollars towards health care expenses and quality improvement activities, limiting the amount spent on administrative and marketing costs and profit. Under the law, large group plans are required to spend at…