This column explores how health reform is changing the ways in which we pay for and deliver health care in the U.S. It also highlights the ways in which our current system is falling short on measures of coverage, access and affordability. On any given week, that could mean a look at how Republican plans to repeal Obamacare could reshape the individual insurance market, how the safety net system is adapting to new financial pressures, or how the trend of doctors and hospitals merging into ever-larger entities is driving up costs. We also explore health care costs and whether the Affordable Care Act or its successor plans can live up to the promise to rein them in. Throughout, we keep watch on how the goals of health reform intersect with the shaping power of markets and human behavior. Contributors include veteran health journalist Trudy Lieberman and independent health journalist Kellie Schmitt, with occasional contributions from independent journalists such as Susan Abram and Sara Stewart.
The American Health Care Act would allow states to charge older adults up to five times more than young people, resulting in much higher premiums for those in their early sixties. Critics call it an "age tax."
As drug manufacturers launch a $100 million campaign in a bid to shift the blame over soaring drug prices, how might reporters best cover this urgent issue?
History offers us some basic lessons on how well high-risk pools work for insuring sicker enrollees, with preexisting conditions. Their track record is hardly encouraging.
The only way to insure everyone at a reasonable cost is to make sure everyone — healthy and sick — is in the risk pool together. The House GOP plan won't achieve that goal.
States such as Kentucky and Arizona are seeking to change how their Medicaid programs work through new policies that include work requirements, enrollment lockouts and increased cost sharing.
The historic defeat sent a signal to politicians that everyone needs health coverage, comprehensive benefits, and sick people can’t be left out.
In Bakersfield, Calif., researchers found 30-day readmission rates dropped significantly when pharmacists where given a larger role in caring for patients.
Why not allow Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices? Economists such as Neeraj Sood worry such a move would hamper crucial innovations over time. But not everyone agrees.
"Our health care system remains in a crisis," writes the CEO of Molina Healthcare. "Both the AHCA and the ACA only address the funding of health care and fail to tackle the troubling rate at which health care costs are rising."
The media critic in Jost laments that "so much coverage is focused on politics within the Republican Party, to a much greater extent than on what the legislation would specifically do."
