Can we speak the same language?
On April 13, 2012, CHRT is sponsoring a symposium geared to health policy-makers, funders and researchers, to ask this question: can individuals from these three worlds do a better job of working together? I come from the health policy world at the state level, and more recently have a toe in the academic world, so I’ve had the chance to …
Read more >The New York Times: Equitable Health Care: Sunday Dialogue
CHRT director Marianne Udow-Phillips’ responds to Alan B. Cohen’s commentary in the New York Times “Sunday Dialog.”
Read more >After SCOTUS: The Status Quo is Not an Option
Everybody and their brother will be blogging about the Supreme Court arguments on health care reform over the next several weeks. I do not want to add to the noise by focusing on the arguments and/or who has the winning position: many others will offer that kind of analysis. Instead, I want to focus on what will happen if the …
Read more >Who Can Tell the Public the Truth About Health Care Costs?
The Feb. 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine had an excellent commentary by Peter Newman about how difficult it is to talk to the public about health care costs. He captures the issue well: “The problem is that no one in charge seems willing to acknowledge that getting a handle on cost growth will also involve uncomfortable …
Read more >The Death of Health Insurers? Don’t Start the Funeral Just Yet
In late January, just after my fellow instructors and I had led our students at the U-M School of Public Health in a discussion of the complexity of health coverage, and the difficulty of actually doing what health insurers do given the American system of financing health care, the New York times ran an opinion piece by Ezekiel Emanuel and Jeffrey Liebman that started like …
Read more >The Facts: Timing Matters
Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported on some research that would make anyone who is trying to inform public policy lose sleep. The story described just how impervious to the facts people often are in their assessments of data relevant to public policy. Case in point: immigration. The survey showed that people believe the percentage of U.S. residents …
Read more >New fellowship pairs University of Michigan researchers with state policy makers to better connect research and policy
The Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation (CHRT) announced today the inaugural class of the CHRT Policy Fellowship at the University of Michigan, a new fellowship program focused on building connections between health services research and policy for more effective, evidence-based health policy decisions. The fellowship, thought to be the first of its kind in the nation, will bring together …
Read more >Survey shows 81 percent of Michigan primary care physicians have capacity, willing to serve more patients, including those with Medicaid
Survey results released today by the Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation (CHRT), in partnership with the Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit (CHEAR) at the University of Michigan, show that Michigan primary care physicians will continue accepting new patients—including Medicaid recipients—as the state’s insured population grows under health care reform. Results of the statewide survey reveal that a majority …
Read more >Federal Health Research Cuts: You Can’t Have it Both Ways
With lawmakers under increasing pressure to reduce overall federal spending, funding has been limited in many areas of health research and enforcement. Even before the recent focus on deficit reduction, funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been significantly constrained. In the 10 years prior to fiscal year 2008, the NIH budget grew by 31 percent, to $29 …
Read more >The Latest (Not Greatest) on Essential Benefits
Well, the federal government has spoken about its intent with regard to defining essential benefits, and the answer is: leave it to the states. As Tim Jost notes in his latest blog post, there are some (probably, most) who assumed the Affordable Care Act would result in more uniformity in essential benefits across the country. But instead (no doubt bowing to …
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