Health Affairs Blog
Health Affairs Blog
- May 17, 2012
- Implementing Health Reform: State-Based, Partnership, And Federally Facilitated Exchanges
- On May 16, 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services moved three steps closer to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges, which will happen on January 1, 2014. First, HHS announced the award of 5 new level 1 exchange establishment grants (Illinois, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, and Tennessee) and one [...]
- May 16, 2012
- Remembering Larry Lewin: A Legacy Of Accomplishment And Mentorship
- On April 29, 2012, four days after his 74th birthday, Larry Lewin (pictured below) died from complications of an underlying cancer. The funeral was May 1 and his wife, Marion asked me to speak briefly about his professional life. What follows is adapted from those remarks. It will be obvious that anyone who knew Larry [...]
- May 16, 2012
- Electronic Prescribing: Where We Stand And Lessons For Policymakers
- Editor’s note: For more on the adoption of electronic health systems, see these recent Health Affairs articles by Decker and coauthors, DesRoches and coauthors, and Hsiao and coauthors, which were discussed at an April 25 event. Since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in 2009, healthcare professionals, researchers, analysts and policy makers have been [...]
- May 15, 2012
- The Latest Health Wonk Review
- A belated tip of the hat to Hank Stern’s Health Wonk Review at Insure Blog. Hank offers a nice collection of posts, including Diane Meier’s Health Affairs Blog post on Amy Berman’s Narrative Matters essay and overcoming barriers to palliative care. Happy reading!
- May 15, 2012
- Early Lessons From A Shared Risk, Integrated Care Organization Serving A Commercial Population
- Background: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ designation of 32 accountable care organizations (ACOs) across the U.S. to enroll Medicare fee-for-service patients beginning in 2012 makes ACOs an important feature of the national healthcare landscape–at least for publicly insured patients.However in 2007, Blue Shield of California, along with provider and employer partner organizations, began [...]
- May 14, 2012
- When Epidemiology Goes Astray: Valuing Cancer Care In The United States And Europe
- In a recent Health Affairs paper, we documented that the United States has a significant survival advantage over much of Europe when it comes to cancer: 1.8 years for those diagnosed during our study window. Furthermore, we showed over a 17-year period that this gap had widened, not narrowed, and that this widening was more [...]
- May 13, 2012
- Implementing Health Reform: The Minimum Loss Ratio & Summary Of Benefits And Coverage
- The two most significant—and controversial–Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance reforms of 2012 are the minimum medical loss ratio (MLR) rebate and the summary of benefits and coverage (SBC) requirement. On Friday, May 11, 2012, further regulatory guidance was released on both of these initiatives. Tidying Up The MLR Rules The minimum medical loss ratio requirement [...]
- May 11, 2012
- Health Policy Brief: Workplace Wellness Programs
- A new Health Policy Brief from Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation examines trends in workplace wellness programs and the potential impact of provisions of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. About two-thirds of companies that offer health benefits to workers also provide a wellness program, such as health-risk assessments and screenings for [...]
- May 10, 2012
- Implementing Health Reform: Increasing Medicaid Payments For Primary Care Physicians
- On May 9, 2012, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services released proposed regulations to implement section 1202 of the Health Care and Education Reform Act of 2010. Section 1202 increases Medicaid payments made to primary care physicians for primary care services during the years 2013 and 2014 to Medicare payment rates, with the additional [...]
- May 9, 2012
- Wide Variations Found In Knee Replacement Surgery Costs And Quality
- Knee osteoarthritis is a common ailment—and treatment is expensive: in 2008 total knee replacement inpatient costs in the United States exceeded $9 billion—the highest among the ten procedures for which demand is growing the fastest. A new study, released today as a Web First by Health Affairs, compares operating times, hospital lengths-of-stay, discharge dispositions, and [...]
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