Health Affairs

Moral Failure And Health Costs: Two Simplistic Spending Narratives

What to do about the seemingly inexorable rise in health spending has been the central health policy challenge for two generations of health economists and policymakers. In 1965, before Medicare and Medicaid, health spending was about 5.8 percent of GDP...

Published Tue, Oct 27 2015 10:00 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Public Health, Medicare, Hospitals, Social Determinants of Health, Population Health, Featured, Payment Policy, Insurance and Coverage, Costs and Spending, Equity and Disparities, Health Professionals, Long-term Services and Supports, Affordable Care Act, physician payment, conservative, progressive

Budget Legislation Would Repeal Auto-Enrollment Requirement For Large Employers

Implementing Health Reform. On October 27, 2015, the provisions of the proposed Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 became publicly available. If adopted, this legislation would, among other things, increase caps on discretionary spending for 2016 and 2017...

Published Tue, Oct 27 2015 8:13 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Employer-Sponsored Insurance, Following the ACA, Insurance and Coverage, Costs and Spending, Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, nudge provision, section 1511, Department of Labor, auto-enrollment

CMS Releases Snapshot Of 2016 Federally Facilitated Marketplace Premiums

Implementing Health Reform. On October 26, 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released its first snapshot of 2016 federally facilitated marketplace (FFM) plan premiums. CMS announced that premiums are up for benchmark second-lowest...

Published Mon, Oct 26 2015 5:34 PM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Featured, Following the ACA, Insurance and Coverage, Costs and Spending, open enrollment, Federally Facilitated Marketplace, advanced premium tax credits, silver plan, benchmark premiums

Health Risk Continues To Improve In Covered California

The recent release of risk corridor results by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has highlighted a national issue for health insurers offering coverage in the individual market under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In many states, some...

Published Mon, Oct 26 2015 9:00 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Quality, Hospitals, Population Health, Featured, Insurance and Coverage, Costs and Spending, Medicaid and CHIP, Affordable Care Act, premiums, State exchanges, Covered California, MediCal, risk score analysis, risk pools, enrollee population

Healthcare.gov Improvements And New Investigative Reports

Implementing Health Reform. On October 23, the House of Representatives passed with a nearly party-line vote of 240 to 189 a budget reconciliation act intended to repeal key provisions of the Affordable Care Act. The terms and import of this bill were...

Published Fri, Oct 23 2015 3:04 PM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Following the ACA, Costs and Spending, Medicaid and CHIP, open enrollment, ACA Marketplace, social security, budget reconciliation, insurance fraud

Health Affairs Briefing: Food & Health

The November 2015 issue of Health Affairs takes a comprehensive look at the complex relationships between food and health. What we eat, where we eat, how much we eat, and how we produce our food all have consequences for individual and community well...

Published Fri, Oct 23 2015 10:00 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Public Health, Elsewhere@ Health Affairs, Featured

Difficile Est Primum Esse: How A Triple Whammy Undermined The Triple Aim

By 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services wants 85 percent of traditional Medicare reimbursements to be based on quality or value, with 30 percent of payments reimbursed through alternative payment models like Accountable Care Organizations...

Published Fri, Oct 23 2015 9:00 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Medicare, Quality, Hospitals, Population Health, Featured, Insurance and Coverage, Organization and Delivery, Costs and Spending, Accountable Care Organizations, Health Professionals, triple aim, reference pricing, Physician Group Practice, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health System, Pioneer ACO program

ACA Litigation Yields Marketplace Data Access Precedent; States Challenge Fee

Implementing Health Reform. The Center for the Study of Services, doing business as Consumer Checkbook , is a nonprofit business that has for three decades provided consumers with price and quality rating information on health and services providers in...

Published Thu, Oct 22 2015 2:35 PM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Following the ACA, Insurance and Coverage, Medicaid and CHIP, HHS, Texas, Affordable Care Act, Federally Facilitated Marketplace, Louisiana, Litigation, Consumer Checkbook, Kansas

Hospital Community Benefit: How Partnerships Can Support Healthy Communities

With the increased focus on broader determinants of health, health foundations are asked to think and act more expansively and creatively about how to support health. In many ways, public health is getting back to its roots in doing so: the idea that...

Published Thu, Oct 22 2015 1:43 PM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Nonmedical Determinants, Public Health, Hospitals, Health Philanthropy, GrantWatch, Health Promotion and Disease PreventionGW, Community Development, Healthy Communities, Hospital community benefit

Narrative Matters: Poems On Vulnerable Populations And Patients

Editor’s note: This spring, Health Affairs held its first ever poetry contest. Three winning poems were published in the journal . We’re also featuring some of our other favorites on the Blog throughout the month of October. Mental Illness Runs In My...

Published Thu, Oct 22 2015 11:06 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Mental Health, Narrative Matters, Featured, narrative medicine, Narrative Matters poetry

The Public Health Dimension Of Germany’s Refugee Crisis

Germany is expecting up to 1.5 million asylum-seekers in 2015 who need shelter, food, and access to basic services. The continued influx of migrants is a major challenge for Germany’s health care system, which is tasked with providing essential medical...

Published Thu, Oct 22 2015 7:35 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Public Health, Global Health, Mental Health, Population Health, Featured, Organization and Delivery, Costs and Spending, Equity and Disparities, Long-term Services and Supports, healthy migrant effect, European refugees, Germany, immigration crisis, immunizations

Instructions For Reconciling Tax Credits, Basic Health Plan Funding Methodology Released

Implementing Health Reform. Tax Form 8962 Draft Instructions On October 20, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released draft instructions for the 2015 form 8962. Form 8962 is the form that taxpayers use to reconcile the advance premium tax credits (APTC...

Published Wed, Oct 21 2015 10:55 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Payment Policy, Following the ACA, Insurance and Coverage, Costs and Spending, Medicaid and CHIP, IRS, Basic Health Program, advanced premium tax credits

The Daraprim Price Hike And A Role For Antitrust

The story of pyrimethamine (Daraprim) has been splashed across the news. Turing Pharmaceuticals , run by a former hedge fund manager, acquires the drug, which treats a life-threatening parasitic infection, and raises the price from $13.50 to $750. The...

Published Wed, Oct 21 2015 7:37 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Featured, Costs and Spending, Drugs and Medical Technology, Big Pharma, Martin Shkreli, Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, Turing Pharmaceuticals, Daraprim, antitrust violations

CMS Provides FAQ About New Law Allowing States To Keep Original ACA Small-Employer Definition

Implementing Health Reform. On October 7, 2015, President Obama signed into law the Protecting Affordable Coverage for Employees (PACE) Act. The PACE Act amends the definition of “small employer” in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) so that it would continue...

Published Tue, Oct 20 2015 9:25 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Following the ACA, Insurance and Coverage, employer coverage, PACE Act, SHOP program, small employers

Review Of Proposed 340B Omnibus Guidance: How We Got Here And What It Says

In a previous post —now almost one and a half years ago—I described “the coming storm” I anticipated would develop around the 340B drug discount program. After a brief tornado hit the House Energy and Commerce Committee when they considered...

Published Tue, Oct 20 2015 8:29 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: Hospitals, Featured, Payment Policy, Costs and Spending, Medicaid and CHIP, Drugs and Medical Technology, Health Professionals, Prescription Drugs, drug discount program, Health Resources and Services Administration, 21st Century Cures, 340B program, House Energy & Commerce Committee

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