Health Policy Program: Latest Articles

The United States appears headed toward another national debate about health system reform. Worry about access and health system deficiencies has reached critical mass, and polls indicate that health care leads the domestic agenda for the 2008 elections. This debate, like previous debates, will succeed or fail in Congress. We highlight key elements of recent sagas in health legislation and offer advice to the next president and Congress for improving the likelihood of a successful outcome in 2009-10:

On November 11, 2000, Mark Quasius, then 37, learned that the strange sensation in his right ear was caused by a rare carcinoma in his upper sinuses.

After a variety of treatments, including multiple surgeries on his head, lungs, pancreas, and hip bones, the prognosis for his advanced adenoid cystic carcinoma is pretty good. After consultation with Andrew Putnam, MD, a palliative care specialist at Lombardi Cancer Center and Georgetown University Hospital, his life is pretty good too. Dr. Putnam brought… more

As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has released his budget threatened by $14 billion of red ink, many are asking whether California can afford the ambitious health care reforms that passed the state Assembly in December. Given the social and economic costs of leaving as many as 6.5 million Californians uninsured, the better question may be: Can we afford not to? Those worried by the possible impact of the budget gap on health reform include Senate President Pro Tem Don… more

David DeGrazia has sketched out a health reform proposal that combines the monopsony purchasing power of a single public payer with managed competition among health plans and implicitly among providers, alone or in groups. The proposal differs from the archetypal “Medicare fee-for-service for all” model in creative ways, and indeed it is developed to address some of the standard fears about whether a single-payer system squelches choice and incentives for innovation. But DeGrazia’s truly novel claim is that this version… more

Last month, the Census Bureau estimated that 2.2 million people became uninsured in 2006.

With rising numbers of uninsured Americans, and the administration’s decision to wage war against children’s health insurance in hopes of stifling comprehensive health reform, we would be remiss not to examine the last time our nation seriously contemplated a system of coverage for all Americans.

In March 1993, Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.), the leader of a bipartisan group of senators trying to strike a deal on… more