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A Weekly Health Policy Round Up From Health Affairs            

**February 2, 2020**

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THIS WEEK ON THE BLOG

FOLLOWING THE ACA

ACA Litigation Round-Up: A Status Check

By Katie Keith (1/29/20)

While all eyes have been on whether (and when) the Supreme Court will
hear a challenge in Texas v. United States, other Affordable Care Act
litigation continues before the Supreme Court, appellate courts, and
district courts across the country. This post briefly summarizes the
status of many of the lawsuits we are tracking. Read More >>

ELSEWHERE @ HEALTH AFFAIRS

Health Affairs In 2019: Editor's Picks

By Alan Weil (1/27/20)

As Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief, I enjoy reading hundreds of articles
each year on an incredibly wide range of health policy topics. My top
ten goes beyond our "most-read" and "most-shared" articles,
which tend to focus on costs and spending. I hope you find these
articles compelling, enjoy reading them, and learn something from them,
just as I have.
Read More >>

GLOBAL HEALTH

The Novel Coronavirus: Assessing The American Response

By Ashish K. Jha (1/31/20)

We must support and respond to those countries affected by the 2019-nCoV
outbreak, but our actions cannot stop there. Ongoing preventive
investments and planning are necessary to protect the health not only of
Americans, but of people all over the world. Read More >>

HEALTH EQUITY

Discrimination By Artificial Intelligence In A Commercial Electronic
Health Record-A Case Study

By Sara G. Murray, Robert M. Wachter, and Russell J. Cucina (1/31/20)

Software vendors should involve ethicists, clinical informaticists, and
operational experts early in the process of developing any CDS method,
and health care delivery organizations need to ensure a broad ethical
perspective as they evaluate new tools for implementation.
Read More >>

MEDICARE

Why Medicare Advantage Plans Are Being Overpaid By $200 Billion And What
To Do About It

By Richard Kronick (1/29/20)

Under reasonably conservative assumptions about the rate of growth of
Medicare Advantage coding intensity, using the budget neutrality method
to calculate coding intensity would likely result in approximately $200
billion in savings to taxpayers over the next decade compared to current
policy. Read More >>

Improvement In Chronic Disease Outcomes For Medicare Beneficiaries Has
Stalled-Where Do We Go From Here?

By Jackson Williams (1/28/20)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services must keep trying to
either prove or rule out the ability to effectively coordinate care in
fee-for-service Medicare. Read More >>

GRANTWATCH

The Five Most-Read GrantWatch Blog Posts Of 2019

By Lee-Lee Prina (1/27/20)

See which are the top-five blog posts of 2019 in GrantWatch, our series
on health philanthropy. This year, blog posts on a variety of topics
were popular. Read More >>

HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Closing The Health Disparity Gap For American Indians And Alaska Natives
Through Health IT Modernization

By Theresa Cullen, Matthew A. Demaree, and Shannon Effler (1/27/20)

The administration must take immediate steps to address unfulfilled
trust and treaty obligations with tribal nations by implementing a
strategy to end unacceptable health disparities and address urgent
life-safety issues facing the American Indian/Alaska Native population.
Read More >>

PREVENTION

As Presidential Candidates Debate Sweeping Health Care Proposals,
Preventive Coverage Opportunities Are Overlooked

By Richard Hughes IV (1/29/20)

With health care remaining a top issue for voters in the upcoming 2020
elections, candidates could consider meaningful, actionable updates to
provisions that advance access to preventive services for individuals
with all types of health care coverage. Read More >>

PHARMACEUTICALS AND MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY

Managing Uncertainty In Drug Value: Outcomes-Based Contracting Supports
Value-Based Pricing

By Daniel S. Mytelka, William M. Cassidy, Donald B. Kohn, and Mark R.
Trusheim (1/30/20)

Outcomes-based contracts do not undercut value-based pricing. Read More
>>

ACCESS TO CARE

Successful Decarceration Relies On Access To Health Care

By Jacqueline Lantsman and Mark Osler (1/30/20)

If we are going to release more people from prison (and we should), we
must ensure that health care coverage is in place to stabilize their
lives and enable them to thrive among us.
Read More >>

INTEGRATION OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES

Working Across Sectors To Improve Health For Older People: The Community
Care Connections Program

By Elisa Fisher, Kelley Akiya, Annie Wells, Yan Li, Christine Peck, and
José A. Pagán (1/30/20)

With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, researchers at New
York University and the New York Academy of Medicine evaluated the
Community Care Connections (CCC) program, which aims to integrate social
services into medical systems of care. There are some promising results
from the 2016 to 2019 time period-for example, CCC program
participants experienced a 29 percent reduction in inpatient
hospitalizations. Read More >>

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IN THE JOURNAL

PATIENT-CENTERED CARE

The Impact Of Decision Aids On Adults Considering Hip Or Knee Surgery

By Vanessa B. Hurley, Hector P. Rodriguez, Stephen Kearing, Yue Wang,
Ming D. Leung, and Stephen M. Shortell

Shared decision making is a collaborative process in which clinicians
and patients discuss trade-offs and benefits of specific treatment
options in light of patients' values and preferences. Decision aids
are paper, video, or web-based tools intended to help patients match
personal preferences with available treatment options. Vanessa Hurley
and coauthors analyzed data for 2012-15 about patients within the ten
High Value Healthcare Collaborative member systems who were exposed to
condition-specific decision aids in the context of consultations for hip
and knee osteoarthritis. Read More >>

GLOBAL HEALTH POLICY

Primary Care Physicians' Role In Coordinating Medical And
Health-Related Social Needs In Eleven Countries

By Michelle M. Doty, Roosa Tikkanen, Arnav Shah, and Eric C. Schneider

Primary care physicians are increasingly tasked with coordinating
services delivered not just by specialists and hospitals but also by
home care professionals and social service agencies. To inform efforts
to improve care coordination, the 2019 Commonwealth Fund International
Health Policy Survey of Primary Care Physicians queried primary care
physicians in eleven high-income countries about their ability to
coordinate patients' medical care with specialists, across settings of
care, and with social service providers. Read More >>

The Effect Of Home-Based Hypertension Screening On Blood Pressure Change
Over Time In South Africa

By Nikkil Sudharsanan, Simiao Chen, Michael Garber, Till Bärnighausen,
and Pascal Geldsetzer

There is considerable policy interest in home-based screening campaigns
for hypertension in many low- and middle-income countries. Nikkil
Sudharsanan and coauthors evaluated the real-world impact of home-based
hypertension screening on two-year change in blood pressure in a
nationally representative cohort of South African adults. Read More >>

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MATERNAL & CHILD HEALTH

Effects Of Medicaid Expansion On Postpartum Coverage And Outpatient
Utilization

By Sarah H. Gordon, Benjamin D. Sommers, Ira B. Wilson, and Amal N.
Trivedi

Because pregnancy-related Medicaid eligibility ends sixty days after
delivery, one effect of Medicaid expansion is to reduce postpartum
coverage losses. Comparing Colorado, which expanded Medicaid, with Utah,
which did not, Sarah Gordon and coauthors find that outpatient use
"increased significantly in Colorado compared to Utah across all four
postpartum months we examined, with the largest increases 31-90 days
after delivery-the period when new mothers transition from pregnancy
to parental Medicaid coverage and are at the highest risk of losing
coverage." Read More >>

AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

Among Low-Income Adults Enrolled In Medicaid, Churning Decreased After
The Affordable Care Act

By Anna L. Goldman and Benjamin D. Sommers

Anna Goldman and Benjamin Sommers explore Medicaid enrollment
churn-the frequent coverage losses that enrollees experience. In the
period 2011-16, gaps in coverage and loss of coverage each declined by
4.3 percentage points in states that expanded Medicaid, a decline
significantly larger than in states that did not expand Medicaid. Read
More >>

GRANTWATCH

Philanthropic Strategy In The Face Of An Opioid Epidemic

By Jennifer Chubinski and Michelle Lydenberg

The authors are staffers at Interact for Health, a foundation that has
worked to address the opioid epidemic in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area
since 2008. Cincinnati was particularly hard hit. Their article (free
access) discusses the evolution of the foundation's ongoing work on
the crisis. Interact was the region's first funder to dedicate
significant financial and staff resources to combating the problem. The
funder's role went beyond awarding grants, though: it served as a
neutral convener, a subject-matter expert, and-in the area of harm
reduction-a catalyst for change. The article covers Interact's
funding strategy, outcomes of its funding, lessons learned (from 2008 to
2018), and plans for the future. Read More >>

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BOOK REVIEWS
A Failed Revolution In Mental Health

By Jeff Goldsmith

Rarely has intraprofessional conflict in medicine had such far-reaching
consequences for American society as in the fight over the biological
foundations of psychiatry. Anne Harrington, a professor of the history
of science at Harvard University, chronicles this struggle in her new
book, Mind Fixers.
Read More >>

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Markup Discounting And Its Discontents

By Rick Mathis

Marty Makary does a masterful job of describing the business
arrangements of health care and their consequences in The Price We Pay.
Read More >>

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About Health Affairs

Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewed journal
at the intersection of health,
health care, and policy. Published monthly by Project HOPE, the journal
is available in print and online. Late-breaking content is also found
through healthaffairs.org , Health Affairs
Today , and Health Affairs
Sunday Update .  

Project HOPE is a global health and
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health care workers to save lives across the globe. Project HOPE has
published Health Affairs since 1981.

Copyright © Project HOPE: The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.

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