Health Policy Program: Latest Articles

From sea to shining sea, many Americans agree: Our health care system is broken. The uninsured now exceed 46 million and health costs keep growing faster than incomes, facts that strain household, employer, and government budgets alike. Awareness of mediocre quality and poor safety performance is spreading beyond academic whispers to mainstream headlines. Still, Washington fiddles and tries to change the subject. Why the chasm between awareness and action?

Consider this: Political extremists, with an iron grip on each party, don’t… more

Healthcare reform in California is at a potential turning point: Business has taken a seat at the bargaining table.

Some members of the state’s new business vanguard participated at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s healthcare summit last week. Steven Burd, chief executive of Safeway Inc., talked about his company’s rising health insurance spending and said it usually takes a crisis to bring about change. Calling healthcare costs a crisis, he urged business to get involved.

Business cooperated early in President Clinton’s campaign to reform… more

With health care costs entering their fourth straight year of double-digit increases, everyone -- employers, providers, the insured and the uninsured -- is wringing their hands about the rising costs of health care.

To deal with the angst, New York either needs a heavy dose of anti-anxiety medication or an honest solution to the growing health-care mess.

Two starkly different plans now on people's lips in Albany purport to offer the latter. One, modeled after the… more

The United States Senate is embroiled in a debate over SB 1955, a bill that purports to help small businesses purchase health insurance. Offered by Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., the dialogue on finding solutions for small businesses is critical.

While most Americans (61 percent) obtain health insurance from employers, this is true for just over half of Californians. Small businesses are California's economic engine, and yet, higher premiums and administrative barriers make it much more difficult for small… more

President George W. Bush recently accomplished something almost no one else could in California politics: He got Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature to put politics aside to pass a new law to meet a real need in real time.

Through the ill-prepared implementation of the new Medicare drug plan, Bush gave the governor a chance to work with the Legislature on an emergency fix to the new federal drug program. The poorest of elderly California seniors, who had… more