Military

In this column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman discusses the President’s commitment of troops to combat the Ebola outbreak and explains the Department of Defense’s widespread role in global health activities.

The latest Kaiser Health Policy News Index finds that attention to health policy stories in August took a back seat to breaking national news such as the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, international events in the West Bank, Syria and Ukraine and a global health story, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The only U.S. health policy news story that garnered a significant amount of public attention this month was the passage of a bill in Congress to overhaul the Veterans Affairs health system.

This Visualizing Health Policy infographic provides highlights from a survey that asked Iraq and Afghanistan active duty soldiers and veterans about whether their physical and emotional health is worse compared with before the wars, whether they personally know someone who has attempted or died by suicide, whether they experienced difficulty…

This Visualizing Health Policy infographic provides highlights from a survey that asked Iraq and Afghanistan active duty soldiers and veterans about whether their physical and emotional health is worse compared with before the wars, whether they personally know someone who has attempted or died by suicide, whether they experienced difficulty…

This month’s Health Policy News Index finds more than six in 10 say they followed
news about long waiting lists for those seeking care at Veterans Affairs (VA) medical facilities closely.
That makes the VA story the most closely followed health story in the first half of 2014, with slightly
more people following it than followed several ACA enrollment stories earlier this year.

This was published as a Wall Street Journal Think Tank column on May 30, 2014.   Gen. Eric Shinseki resigned when it became clear that the problems in the VA health-care system were systemic, not one-off acts of a few bad apples. No administration wants another problem, especially with veterans who have served our country and who matter politically,…

This was published as a Wall Street Journal Think Tank column on May 27, 2014. Problems with the launch of HealthCare.gov and with veterans hospitals allegedly concealing long waits for care feed a narrative that government doesn’t work. But many government programs, including Medicare and Social Security, work well. And there are…

This partnership poll from The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation explores the views and experiences of adults who served in the Iraq or Afghanistan wars as members of the U.S. military in the period after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The majority of veterans of these conflicts say that Americans appreciate their service and that gestures of support are genuine, but many report a number of challenges, including economic struggles, worse physical and mental health than prior to their engagement, and feeling disconnected from civilian life.