This post appeared in the Health Affairs Blog on March 29, 2019: “The Fairness Project: A New Kid on the Block’s Role in Voter Driven Medicaid Expansions.” One surprising outcome from the November 2018 mid-term elections was voter approval of ballot initiatives expanding Medicaid coverage in Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah. These victories were preceded by […]
[The Milbank Quarterly just published this new commentary that I wrote for their November 2018 edition.] Ever since the US Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that the expansion of Medicaid as required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) must be optional rather than mandatory for states, health care advocates have worked heart and soul to […]
[This column appeared on the Health Affairs blog on Thursday, November 1.] Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that states must have an option whether or not to expand Medicaid as authorized in the Affordable Care Act, expansion has been a long, slow slog, state by state, inch by inch. While blue […]
[I co-wrote this opinion column with Paul Hattis for Commonwealth Magazine.] SHOULD MASSACHUSETTS establish mandated nurse-to-patient ratios in law for all the state’s acute care hospitals? This 25-year-old conflict between the Massachusetts Nurses Association and Massachusetts Hospital Association will be determined at the polls on November 6 as Question 1. We think not. We are university […]
FOR THE BETTER part of this decade, Massachusetts had been on a roll regarding its health system’s performance. Since passage of the 2006 universal health insurance law, we’ve been tops in having the lowest number of uninsured the nation. Recent national surveys on cost, quality, access, and public health from the Commonwealth Fund, the United […]
[I wrote this new commentary for the Milbank Quarterly.] In noticeable ways our current health reform period resembles the 2005-2006 era when political leaders, stakeholders, and think tanks began formulating proposals to prepare for a future national effort to achieve comprehensive health reform, a process that came to fruition with the signing of the Affordable […]
[This new commentary was just published by the Milbank Quarterly.] The years 2013 through 2016 were excruciating for the Massachusetts Health Connector. In 2013, the Connector was among the nation’s most troubled federal/state health insurance exchanges, as it endured an epic collapse of its new website to help consumers purchase individual health insurance. Since then, […]
[I wrote this commentary for the spring issue of Commonwealth Magazine. I am watching the new crop of 17 Accountable Care Organizations — ACOs — with great interest. This is a nationally important demonstration that also holds risks for the medical care of many MassHealth enrollees.] ON MARCH 1, the state’s Medicaid program—known as MassHealth—entered […]
[Last summer, I wrote the following review of The Power to Heal: Civil Rights, Medicare, and the Struggle to Transform America’s Health Care System by David Barton Smith. The review just came out in The Common Reader. I still think the book is required reading in our times. And I love the cartoon!] On a […]
