The Center for Studying Health System Change has issued a comprehensive report on the progress of the Massachusetts health reform plan.Anyone interested in the plan's progress will find this must reading.From their overview:As Massachusetts' landmark effort to reach nearly universal health coverage continues, affordability of coverage remains a key concern for individuals and small
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Health Wonk Review for July 26, 2007
This time it's my turn to host Health Wonk Review, a compendium of some of the best health care policy and market posts from the health care blog world.Joe Paduda seemingly gave up his extra summer time researching the arguments against universal coverage. Joe digs into the logical, philosophical, and political issues; there's also a great summary. With all the recent attention to other nation's
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Romney Condemns Obama's Health Plan--But Obama's Plan is a Clone of the Massachusetts Plan Romney Signed!
Mitt Romney criticized Barack Obama's health care proposal over the weekend in New Hampshire. According to The Baltimore Sun, Romney said, "Barack Obama said we're going to have the government take over health care. He at least had the integrity to say he wants to raise your taxes." He added, "The right answer is not a government takeover, it's not socialized medicine. It's not Hillarycare."
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Massachusetts Expected to Further Backpedal on its Individual Mandate
The Boston Globe is reporting that the Massachusetts legislature "will probably make changes" to the new health care law that could well include capping what a person has to pay for health insurance at 10% before the individual mandate law can be enforced.Presumably, this would mean a family with a household income of $50,000 per year would have to pay no more than $5,000. I fear that is still
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New York AG Objects to Insurer's Method for Ranking Doctors by Cost and Quality--Just What We Need in Health Metrics--Lawyers
At the core of any market-based ability to control costs--pay-for-performance or consumer-driven care--is the notion that patients and payers have information available to them on a health care provider's cost and quality results.Too often the health plan rhetoric--or marketing brochures--have got out ahead of anyone's real ability to measure cost and quality both accurately and in a way that is
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Bush Reaffirms Veto Threat Over SCHIP Despite Strong Republican Support for Bipartisan Compromise—What’s Really Going On Here?
The most exasperated person in Washington has to be Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA). The Ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee has worked out a bipartisan compromise with his good friend Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) to continue the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) past its September 30 expiration date.The plan currently covers 6.6 million low income kids and would cover
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"Cavalcade of Risk" is Up Over At "Sentinel Effect"
Richard Eskow has more than two dozen carefully selected posts from the world of insurance blogs up over at his "Sentinel Effect."Richard has put a lot of time into giving us a wide array of good work.
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"Government Subsidies That halve Premiums Would Cut Number of Uninsured by 3%"--No Surprise There But it Was the Wrong Question
That's the headline on a story regarding a Rand study that says giving people subsidies won't do much to decrease the number of those uninsured.But here's the problem with that study: Paying for half the cost of health insurance that averages more than $11,000 for a family in the U.S. still makes health insurance prohibitively expensive for all but the well off.As I posted yesterday, voluntary
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California Health Care Reform—An Individual Mandate is Nowhere Near as Important as Affordable Health Insurance
California is entering the final weeks of a major effort to reform the state’s health insurance system.Good for them and in particular good for Governor Schwarzenegger who is willing to tackle this most prickly of domestic policy issues!The Governor and the legislature will need to get a deal done by the end of September if it is going to happen in this session—or maybe for a long time to come.As
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President Bush is Not Backing Down on His SCHIP Veto Threat
The President is sticking to his guns over his threatened veto of the Senate Finance Committee bipartisan deal to reauthorize and expand the State Children's Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP) at a cost of $35 billion. The deal would expand S-CHIP and pay for it with a big 61 cent cigarette tax--taking the federal per pack tax to $1.A White House spokesman said on Saturday that his advisers "will
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The Latest Health Wonk Review is Up
Here's a summary from the latest edition over at "Colorado Health Insurance Insider:"The Health Wonk Review is THE top health policy roundup in the blogosphere. It’s known for only including the best and brightest, and only the keenest observations of the health policy community. The collection of articles below represent the cream of the crop of recent entries in the ongoing US health care
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Key Republican Senators Call on President Bush Not to Veto S-CHIP Reauthorization--A President Acting Like He Has Nothing to Lose
On Thursday I commented on the Senate Finance deal to reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Plan (S-CHIP). The bipartisan deal calls for a $35 billion expansion of the program, reversing state efforts to use it to cover adults, and pays for it with a whopping new 61 cent per pack tobacco tax.Yesterday, two very important Republican members--Grassley and Hatch--of the Senate Finance
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"Those Crazy Californians. This Time Its Childhood Obesity."
That's the title of Brian Klepper's recent post over at the Blog, "The Doctor Weighs In."He mentions my recent post on this and takes it further. It's a good read.Here's the first part and a link to the rest:California always seems to be ahead on things that matter. A CNN story this week highlights that state's terrific anti-obesity TV campaign. The ads have cute kids sweetly asking "Dad, could
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United Health Launches a New Health Plan That Rewards Healthy Workers--Immediately Criticized for "Turning Health Care Into a Police State."
Under a new program announced by United Health, health plan participants who take tests and other evaluations to prove they are meeting goals for blood pressure, cholesterol, height/weight ratio, and smoking status would be eligible to receive $500 reductions in their health plan deductible ($1,000 family) for every goal met.The plan starts out with a $2,000 single/$5,000 family deductible.In a
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Senate Finance Committee Reaches Bipartisan Agreement to Fund S-CHIP Expansion With a Tobacco Tax--No Cuts to Medicare Advantage
The Senate Finance Committee has reached a tentative agreement to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) by increasing the tobacco tax by another 61 cents—for a total per pack federal tax of $1. With state taxes, the average per pack tax would rise to about $1.68.Under the agreement, the Senate would not go forward with any Medicare Advantage cuts to fund S-CHIP.While 2
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The Best 39 Minutes You Can Spend Understanding the Various National Health Systems
NPR's "Fresh Air" broadcast a 39-minute interview with Jonathan Oberlander, a political scientist with expertise in health care politics and policy and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Studying other systems is important as we in America look to reform our health care system. Unfortunately, we hear many things out of context and some outright myths.Listening to Professor Oberlander
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Can the Democrats Take the Health Care Agenda Back? S-CHIP is the First Test and the Test is On
The debate over how the State Children's Health Insurance Plan (S-CHIP) will be reauthorized is really about whether the Democrats can finally take the health care agenda back from the Republicans.If the Congress cuts private Medicare plan payments to pay for a bigger S-CHIP, it will be a double whammy--a bigger government health plan and potentially a smaller private Medicare program.Congress is
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"Sicko" Revenue Wanes at the Box Office--Why Didn't "Sicko" Resonate?
The Michael Moore movie about the U.S. health care system's problems, "Sicko," had incredible press before its debut. Moore appeared on the likes of Larry King, Leno, and Letterman, and about everywhere else in the days before its premier to hype his newest critical documentary.Last week when the movie grossed only $4.5 million (putting it in 9th place) supporters pointed out that it only opened
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New Tool Kit: Massachusetts Health Reform
Ed Howard and his team at the non-partisan Alliance for Health Reform here in Washington have done another of their great jobs in putting together a resource for anyone interested in the Massachusetts health reform plan.From their overview:"Starting July 1, every adult in Massachusetts is required to have health coverage (except for 60,000 people exempted by the state). To help you understand the
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The Market Has a Place in Health Care But It Also Has Its Limits
Every leading health care proposal today includes a place for the market. Some believe government should run it all and then there are those who believe the real solution lies in just letting an unfettered market get it all done.Health care is not like buying a set of tires. We lose our market-driven objectivity pretty quickly when we are faced with scary medical decisions for ourselves or for
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