Forty-five million nonelderly Americans were uninsured in 2007, and that was before the recession wiped out scores of jobs. Most laid-off workers likely lost their health insurance along with their incomes, and private coverage costs too much for many families to buy. And as medical costs soar, the price tag on promised Medicaid benefits is reaching unsustainable levels. These distress signals have put health care reform high on the president’s and policymakers' agendas. Read more.
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healthpolicycenter.org UI's resource for health policy-related research, commentary and testimony
This joint study by the Urban Institute and the Medical Group Management Association demonstrates that it is possible to simulate physician compensation as if all physician services were paid under the Medicare Fee Schedule and to compare the results with the actual compensation. This analysis confirms substantial differences in actual hourly and annual compensation across specialties, and that, under simulated Medicare compensation, the compensation ratios across specialties are narrowed very little. The non-surgical, procedural specialties, particularly cardiology, continue to do relatively better under the Medicare Fee Schedule than under current reimbursements that includes Medicare as well as other payers.
This report assesses the changes in coverage patterns and health care costs that will occur nationally if major reforms are not enacted. The authors find that by 2015, there could be 59.7 million people uninsured. The number could swell to 67.6 million by 2020, up from an estimated 49.4 million in 2010. As premiums nearly double, employees in small firms would see offers of health insurance almost cut in half, dropping from 41 percent of firms offering insurance in 2010 to 23 percent in 2020. Individual spending could jump 34 percent by 2015 and 79 percent by 2020.
In this report the authors estimate that under the health reform bill passed by the Senate, the cost of uncompensated care will fall from $62.1 billion in 2009 to $46.6 billion in 2019. If no health reform is enacted, they project that uncompensated care would rise to between $107 and $141 billion in 2019. Over the six-year period of proposed health reform legislation, 2014–2019, the costs of uncompensated care without health reform would be between $560 and $700 billion. With reform, the cost would be $330 billion under the Senate bill and provide substantive savings to each level of government.
Building on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, health reform legislation would develop an infrastructure for the ongoing generation and dissemination of information on the comparative effectiveness, where "comparative effectiveness" has been defined as the study of methods to prevent, diagnoses, treat, and monitor A clinical condition or improve delivery of care to assist consumers, clinicians, purchasers, and policy makers to make informed decisions to improve health care at both individual and population levels. The issue brief explores the concept and describes areas of controversy that need to be addressed to make comparative effectiveness research successful.
It’s not exactly news — to Congress, the White House, and now many outside of elite circles — that the federal budget is out of control. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid make up more than 40 percent of spending other than interest during a normal year and all are growing faster than the economy and tax revenues. Yet, Congress has kept the overall tax burden remarkably constant as a share of gross domestic product for most of the past 50 years. Together, these factors lead to sky-high deficits, an exploding national debt, and the specter of economic collapse.
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