Health Affairs

Rebuilding Trust In Medicine: How The Public Can Interpret Differing Guidelines

A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) found that Americans’ trust in medicine has declined significantly over the past few decades. In fact, it’s at an all-time low: just 23 percent of people in the U.S. have “great confidence...

Published Tue, Nov 17 2015 9:00 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Quality, Featured, Health Professionals, National Academy of Medicine, U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, clinical guidelines, American Cancer Society

The Payment Reform Landscape: Specialty Pharmacy — Can Payment Reform Offer Relief?

The number of specialty pharmaceuticals available has increased from 10 to more than 900 over the last 20 years. This is good news for the patients who sorely need these drugs to improve, or even reverse, their medical conditions. However, specialty pharmacy...

Published Thu, Nov 19 2015 9:41 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Featured, Payment Policy, Costs and Spending, Drugs and Medical Technology, Catalyst for Payment Reform, Sovaldi, Turing Pharmaceuticals, Daraprim, retail health clinics

Proposed Benefits And Payment Rule Includes Standardized Plans, New Network Adequacy Standards

On November 20, 2015, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for its 2017 Benefit and Payment Parameters (BPP) rule. Every fall CMS publishes a BPP proposed rule, which is finalized every spring...

Published Fri, Nov 20 2015 8:51 PM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Featured, Payment Policy, Following the ACA, Insurance and Coverage

From The Archives: Pharmaceutical Pricing

Welcome to “ From the Archives ,” a Health Affairs Blog series, where we take a timely topic and delve into the literature and history, from a Health Affairs angle, of course. Harvoni, Sovaldi , Repatha , Daraprim . Four drugs that have made news for...

Published Tue, Nov 24 2015 6:38 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Pharma, Elsewhere@ Health Affairs, Featured, Payment Policy, Insurance and Coverage, Costs and Spending, Drugs and Medical Technology, Research and Development, value-based reimbursement, From the Archives, small molecule drugs, specialty drugs, biosimilars, biotechnology

Narrative Matters: Bearing Fruit: The Fight For The FDA’s Food Safety Reforms

A food safety advocate recounts one long road to the passage of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011. Shelley A. Hearne’s article is freely available to all readers, or you can listen to the podcast . Don’t forget to visit the free Narrative...

Published Wed, Nov 25 2015 7:45 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Public Health, Narrative Matters, Elsewhere@ Health Affairs, Featured, FDA, food safety

CMS Finds Exchange Plans Don’t Measure Up To CHIP And Other ACA Developments

Implementing Health Reform. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) required the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) by April 1, 2015 to review the benefits and cost-sharing in qualified health plans (QHPs) and certify that those plans offer benefits...

Published Tue, Dec 01 2015 2:11 PM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: States, Following the ACA, Insurance and Coverage, Costs and Spending, Medicaid and CHIP, qualified health plans, cost sharing, benefits packages

Loan Fund Helps Safety-Net Providers Grow And Innovate

During a period of increasing concern about widening economic inequality, the community development finance sector has grown to channel nearly $3 billion of capital to high-need communities in the United States. Health care in low-income communities is...

Published Thu, Dec 03 2015 12:39 PM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Public Health, Health Care Costs, Workforce, Hospitals, Health Philanthropy, GrantWatch, Health Care Delivery, Organization and Delivery, Costs and Spending, Health Professionals, Safety Net, Federally Qualified Health Center, poverty, health sector jobs, frontline health care workers

Nothing (Still) Matters: ERISA Preemption Returns To The Supreme Court

It’s back. After more than a decade without a major health care dispute involving the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) reaching the United States Supreme Court, the justices heard oral arguments on December 2 in Gabeille v. Liberty...

Published Mon, Dec 07 2015 11:00 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Employer-Sponsored Insurance, Featured, Insurance and Coverage, Supreme Court, All-Payer Claims Database, Employee Retirement Income Security Act, Gabeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co

Improving Health And Health Care: An Agenda For Reform

The debate over, and eventual enactment of, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) brought to the surface of American politics a long-standing divide over the proper orientation of health care policy. On one side are those who tend to promote more federal control...

Published Wed, Dec 09 2015 5:09 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Medicare, Quality, Veterans, Featured, Health Policy Lab, Insurance and Coverage, Costs and Spending, Medicaid and CHIP, ACA repeal, ACA alternative, ACA reform

Narrative Matters: An Uninsured Immigrant Delays Needed Care

A physician reflects on the bitter reality of delayed and denied care that her immigrant patient faced more than a decade ago and that many immigrants still face today. Cheryl Bettigole’s article is freely available to all readers, or you can listen...

Published Fri, Dec 11 2015 7:35 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Narrative Matters, Elsewhere@ Health Affairs, Featured, immigration

The Slowing Of Health Care Spending: Have We Turned A Corner?

The news in recent years has been good: Overall U.S. spending for health care in 2011 again grew only 3.9 percent . This represented the third consecutive year of a relatively slow growth rate, down from rates as high as 11 percent in 1990 and 7.6 percent...

Published Fri, Aug 09 2013 10:49 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Consumers, Insurance, Physicians, Health IT, Health Care Costs, Spending, Medicare, Quality, Hospitals, Innovation, Effectiveness

Technology And The Changing Business Of Health Care

Three years after the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as “Obamacare,” scholars and political pundits have paid much attention to the macroeconomic effects of the law. Will Obamacare bend the health care cost...

Published Wed, Aug 14 2013 12:15 PM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Health Reform, Consumers, Prevention, Payment, Physicians, Health IT, Chronic Care, Medicare, Workforce, Access, Innovation, Technology

Health Policy Brief: Dietary Guidelines For Americans

A new policy brief from Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) focuses on the upcoming Dietary Guidelines for Americans, set for release later this month. The 1990 National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Act requires the...

Published Fri, Dec 11 2015 12:47 PM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Public Health, Elsewhere@ Health Affairs, Social Determinants of Health, Population Health, Featured, USDA, Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee

Court Rejects Challenge By Secular Entity To ACA Contraceptive Coverage Requirement

Implementing Health Reform. On December 10, 2015, Judge John Jones III of the federal district court of the Middle District of Pennsylvania decided yet another contraceptive coverage case . Unlike the dozens of challenges to the Affordable Care Act contraceptive...

Published Mon, Dec 14 2015 11:40 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Population Health, Following the ACA, Insurance and Coverage, Costs and Spending, Equity and Disparities, Drugs and Medical Technology, Pennsylvania, contraceptive mandate, Religious Freedom Restoration Act

To Debunk Alternative Vaccine Schedules, Physicians Must Listen Then Respond

“I just don’t think his little body can handle all of those shots,” the young mother said to me at her two-month-old son’s check up. “Can’t we wait until he is older? Or spread them out?” As a pediatrician in the Bay Area, I have encountered a wide range...

Published Wed, Dec 16 2015 4:29 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Public Health, Physicians, Children, Featured, Organization and Delivery, Drugs and Medical Technology, vaccines, Health Professionals, physician perspective

Syndication

Recent Posts

Tags

Archives