Massachusetts Health Care Reform: Six Years Later May 1, 2012 Issue Brief In 2006, then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed Massachusetts’ comprehensive health reform designed to provide near-universal health insurance coverage for state residents. Building on a long history of health reform efforts, the state embarked on an ambitious plan to promote shared individual, employer, and government responsibility. This brief examines Massachusetts’ experience with…
The Massachusetts Health Care Landscape May 1, 2012 Fact Sheet This fact sheet summarizes the Massachusetts health care landscape, including data on demographics, population health, the uninsured and the state Medicaid program. Fact Sheet (.pdf)
Health Care Costs: A Primer May 1, 2012 Issue Brief This primer on health care spending in the United States reviews the growth in health care spending since 1970 and the impact of health care costs on families and employers.
Health Care Costs in the U.S.: The Role of Prices and Volume April 19, 2012 Event The Alliance for Health Reform and several cosponsors held the first event in a three-part series of discussions on costs, the factors driving them up and what (if anything) can be done about them. This briefing and others in the series take an in-depth look at a select few of…
Coping with Fragmented Payment in the Real World April 13, 2012 Event The Alliance for Health Reform and The Commonwealth Fund sponsored this briefing which focused on three communities that have reformed and harmonized health care payments across payers to improve care: a New York health center that serves a low income population; a Colorado community that pools money from public and…
Federal Funding Under the Affordable Care Act April 12, 2012 Fact Sheet This fact sheet provides highlights from an analysis tracking the flow of federal Affordable Care Act funds to states as reporter in the Department of Health and Human Services grant database as well as periodic reports from HHS and the Internal Revenue Service. The analysis distinguishes between funds awarded to…
Pulling It Together: The Falloff in Utilization: “There’s Something Happening, Here, What It Is Ain’t Exactly Clear” April 10, 2012 Perspective For as long as I have been in the field, we have seen cycles in health care costs. Per capita health spending would rise, then moderate, then rise gain. My colleague Larry Levitt and I documented this in The Sad History of Health Care Costs and my friend Dr. Jim Mongan…
Patient Cost-Sharing Under the Affordable Care Act April 1, 2012 Report Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), four tiers of health insurance will be offered in the health insurance exchanges and throughout the individual and small group markets beginning in 2014. Under the minimum coverage plan, the “Bronze” plan, the insurance plan will pay for 60 percent of the costs of…
Insurer Rebates under the Medical Loss Ratio: 2012 Estimates April 1, 2012 Report Beginning in 2011, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires insurance plans to pay out a minimum percentage of premium dollars towards health care expenses and quality improvement activities, limiting the amount spent on administrative and marketing costs and profit. Under the law, large group plans are required to spend at…
Program Integrity: Preventing Health Care Fraud and Abuse March 5, 2012 Event Headlines regularly call attention to pockets of fraudulent activity in the health care arena – scams that amount to millions and potentially billions of dollars. The stories typically focus on catching the crooks but not so much on efforts to prevent fraud, waste and abuse in health care programs. Both…
