US News & World Report

Len Nichols in U.S. News | Voters See Very Different Healthcare Plans from Obama, Clinton, and McCain

Communications — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:01:00 -0400

New America in the News:

U.S. News | Voters See Very Different Healthcare Plans from Obama, Clinton, and McCain

. . . "The middle class is worried about affordability. They see it in rising premiums and in copays," says Len Nichols, director of the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation. Premiums rose 6.1 percent last year, more than twice the rate of inflation and significantly outstripping the 3.7 percent increase in workers' earnings, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2007 Employer Health Benefits Survey. Since 2001, healthcare costs have increased 78 percent, according to Kaiser. Meanwhile, high healthcare costs make it increasingly difficult for businesses to compete against companies overseas that typically don't offer health benefits, says Nichols. Since 2000, the portion of firms offering health insurance has shrunk from 69 percent to 60 percent. . .

Steve Burd in U.S. News | Look Twice at Loan Advice

Communications — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:13:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Look Twice at Loan Advice (U.S. News & World Report)

. . . Stephen Burd, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, says many colleges are affordable without the help of private loans at all. Plus, Burd adds, federal loans also are due only after graduation, and the subsidized ones don't accrue interest while students are still in school, as most private loans do—a fact not mentioned in the ads. . .

Len Nichols in U.S. News & World Report | Unions Shaping Health Care Debate?

Jerry Irvine — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:47:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Do Unions Still Shape the Healthcare Debate?

A survey released this week came to the unsurprising conclusion that people are having a hard time paying for healthcare. The totally nonrandom sample of more than 26,000 people who took the online survey skewed heavily toward the insured (77 percent), unionized (57 percent), college educated (80 percent), and white (86 percent). If anybody should be able to afford healthcare, it would be these folks, right? So it was interesting to see that a third of them said they'd skipped getting necessary medical care because it was too expensive, and half of those with health insurance said it doesn't cover what they need at a price they can afford.

The AFL-CIO, which sponsored the survey with an affiliated outreach group called Working America, has its eye on the upcoming election season, of course. "We're going to take this survey into the election and raise it with candidates at all levels," says Heather Booth, director of the healthcare reform campaign for the AFL-CIO. But with organized labor representing only about 15 percent of workers in the United States today, it's worth asking what role it plays in protecting healthcare benefits or setting the agenda for healthcare reform. Are labor unions still relevant?

...

"What seems to be going on is that labor is accepting the concept of shared responsibility for healthcare going forward," says Len Nichols, director of the health policy program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. Rather than simply protecting its own, organized labor has become increasingly receptive to the idea that it must work with business and government to find healthcare solutions, says Nichols.

Unions may have less clout at the bargaining table, but in the political arena organized labor is still a force to be reckoned with, say experts. Labor unions buy advertising and invest in public education campaigns that can influence public opinion. "They're able to marshal and focus the messages that the general public will see," says Nichols.

Afshin Molavi in U.S. News | Global Public Opinion Turns Against the U.S. on Iran's Nuclear Program

Communications — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:40:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Global Public Opinion Turns Against the U.S. on Iran's Nuclear Program (U.S. News & World Report)

. . . Iranian policy figures, adds Afshin Molavi, an analyst with the New America Foundation in Washington, like to play off an expression favored by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She talks of U.S. support for an emerging "new Middle East" that includes political forces moving the region in the direction of moderation, democracy, and opposition to radical movements linked to Iran. "They say there will be a new Middle East," Molavi reports, "but it will be shaped more by Iran than by you."

New America in US News & World Report | 'Candidates Push Economic Stimulus Plans'

Communications — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:59:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Presidential Candidates Push Economic Stimulus Plans (US News & World Report)

As Republicans and Democrats in Congress negotiate the exact details of an economic stimulus package, that debate was mirrored today among the chief economic advisers to several of the major presidential candidates at a forum at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. While none of these plans will be enacted, at least not in full, each adviser claimed his plan shows the superior economic thinking of his respective candidate. more

Ellen Seidman in U.S. News & World on Bush's Mortgage Plan

Communications — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 13:26:00 -0500

New America in the News:

The devil is in the details of President Bush's plan to curb the nation's escalating home foreclosures by freezing for five years the introductory "teaser" interest rates on many subprime loans. Borrowers who qualify—Bush estimates that up to 1.2 million might be eligible—will also have the option of refinancing into a new mortgage or switching to a loan insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

Lenders had already been working out deals with strapped subprime borrowers, but only a small number of homeowners have been able to renegotiate their loans. Bush's plan aims to speed up these deals by laying out criteria to help lenders determine who is eligible for help. "We hope that these guidelines will be adopted as reasonable and customary standard practice across the entire servicing industry," said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who helped broker the deal with other regulators and mortgage lenders. Here are six things you should know about the plan:

It will benefit only a small group of subprime borrowers. ...

Borrowers must ask for help. ...

The plan is not a "silver bullet." ...

Questions remain about how it will work. ...

This is an industry-led deal, not a government bailout. ...

The plan will become a hot political issue. This is a bold step for an administration that has, until recently, insisted that the task of refinancing mortgage loans should be handled on a case-by-case basis. "There are obviously significant limitations on what they're willing to do, but I don't think we would have gotten this plan out of the administration that came into office in 2001," says Ellen Seidman, former director of both the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., who now heads a project at the New America Foundation. As the presidential election nears, the health of the economy—and how candidates will deal with the mortgage crisis—is gaining political importance. Some Democratic candidates argued that the plan doesn't go far enough and proposed their own plans. Hillary Clinton, for example, proposed an across-the-board rate freeze and a moratorium on foreclosures. John Edwards said he would freeze interest rates for seven years. ...

For the complete article, please follow this link.

New America Foundation in US News.com on Hagel's Letter to Bush

Communications — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 08:33:00 -0400

New America in the News:

In a broad-ranging talk at a dinner Tuesday night in Washington, GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska warned of dangers in the way the Bush administration is handling the Iran issue, previewing a major policy speech on Iran that he will give next week.

Hagel has announced that he will leave the Senate when his current term ends in a year; he has also said, after considering it, that he will not make a run for the presidency. His talk Tuesday night, sponsored by the New America Foundation, was also full of thinly veiled criticisms of the administration's general foreign policy approach.

He characterized Iran as a leading issue that, if not handled well, could lead to "one of the great miscalculations in history." In remarks that seem to further distinguish his views on countering Iran's nuclear ambitions from those of the administration's, he warned that "it's the unpredictable that always gives us pause. ... The president of the United States is talking about World War III, and threatening."

He also appeared to urge stronger diplomacy—and reaching out to Russia in particular, whose president, Vladimir Putin, has been highly critical of late of U.S. sanctions and the atmosphere of threatened military action. "Does anyone believe we are going to be successful in dealing with Iran without Russia?" he asked.

A published report says Hagel has written a private note to the president urging "direct, unconditional, comprehensive talks with Iran." ...

For the complete article, please follow this link.

USNews.com Interview with Shannon Brownlee on Overtreating Patients

Communications — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 08:25:00 -0400

New America in the News:

The more medical care you receive, the sicker you'll get. That's the stark message in Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, Shannon Brownlee's new book. Brownlee, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation (and a former senior writer at U.S. News & World Report), examined research from around the country on which medical treatments actually make people healthier and what individuals can to do ensure that healthcare doesn't kill them.

Most of us think that going to a medical specialist means we get better care. But you say that's not the case. How come?

Shannon: People presume that because the specialist knows the most about their particular field, they'll get better care. So we all clamor to go to specialists. But the evidence says the more physicians involved in your care, especially specialists, the more likely the care will be uncoordinated. This means that the doctors aren't talking to each other. And even more than that, specialists forget about the really simple stuff, like making sure a patient gets a medication at the right time. It turns out that the really simple stuff is very important. Somebody has to take care of the whole patient.

How do things get messed up?

If you have a heart attack, and you go to a hospital, you see an interventional cardiologist, and you have angioplasty or a stent, this can save your life. That cardiologist is a highly trained specialist. To prevent a person from having another heart attack, the single most important thing a doctor can do is to tell the patient to take aspirin or to take a beta blocker. Yet this is precisely the thing that gets forgotten. As specialists get better and better at doing the little teeny thing they do, they get worse and worse at taking care of the simple basic stuff. You leave the hospital without your prescription.

Where do people get good care--not too much or too little, just enough to get them well?

I had the attitude that managed care is worse healthcare; I always avoided being part of a managed-care plan if I could. What surprised me is that when you're looking for the best-quality healthcare, it's at the Veterans Health Administration and Kaiser Permanente and Group Health of Seattle. It turns out that managed care, in the sense of coordinated care, is the best. The VHA outperforms even the best-ranked private-sector hospitals in all 17 of the National Committee for Quality Assurance measures, which include managing blood pressure and testing glycosylated hemoglobin in diabetics, which shows how well they're maintaining blood sugar. And a Rand study found that the VHA delivers two thirds of the care recommended by medical professional societies. That might not sound all that great, until you remember that another Rand study found that doctors outside the VHA deliver on average only about 50 percent of recommended care.

What's the secret of the VHA and these other successful groups?

The doctors work together in collaborative groups. The system monitors the behavior of doctors; it really keeps track of what they're doing. They encourage their physicians to adhere to clinical practice guidelines that have been proven to improve outcomes. They don't have that many specialists, generally. They put a premium on coordination. But unfortunately they're in the minority...

For the complete article, please visit USNews.com.

US News & World Report Cites Maya MacGuineas on Tax Rates, Growth

Communications — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 09:27:00 -0400

New America in the News:

"Business Loves Hillary!" was the gushing declarative that appeared on a recent cover of Fortune. The magazine's political conclusion seemed validated by a June 26 Manhattan fundraiser for Senator Clinton hosted by multibillionaire business legend Warren Buffett. Clinton praised Buffett as "patriotic" for understanding it was the national duty of wealthier Americans to pay higher taxes.

And guess what, if Clinton or any of the other Democratic presidential candidates gets elected, it's a fair bet that corporate America will get a chance to do its duty. In a May 29 speech, Clinton said, "It's simply not fair that as corporate profits have skyrocketed, the percentage of taxes paid by corporations [has] fallen...It's as though we've gone back to the era of the robber barons..."

I recently asked Lawrence Summers, President Clinton's final treasury secretary, about corporate taxes. His response: "Yeah, we've got the second-highest tax rate in the world, but the fourth-least revenue collection [as a share of gross domestic product] in the world. The system does need to be changed, but not in a way that will in the end cause them to pay less taxes."

Yet companies are paying more already. In 2006, the feds took in $354 billion in corporate income taxes, 70 percent more than in 2000. And perhaps lowering corporate rates might actually generate more business and revenue. In an analysis, Maya MacGuineas of the [post-partisan] New America Foundation found that "lower tax rates connect to higher growth" around the globe...

For the complete article, please visit the US News & World Report website.

David Gray in US News & World Report

Communications — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 07:16:00 -0400

New America in the News:

[Mortimer B. Zuckerman] is right that our nation needs to "equip Americans with the skills to make them mobile and give them greater economic security." Helping Americans learn better job skills will increase salaries, mobility, and prosperity. Job training is the sleeper issue of the 2008 presidential campaign. While candidates from both parties are talking about middle-class anxiety and inequality, neither party is addressing job skills. The party that begins to focus on job training and provides real solutions will reap a great political reward.

DAVID GRAY
New America Foundation
Washington, D.C.