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The Connection

A roundup of recent Fund publications, charts, multimedia, and other timely content.




June 23, 2023

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State Scorecard: Surging Preventable Deaths, Untreated Mental Health Needs
The country is grappling with a surge in preventable deaths and unaddressed mental health needs, according to the latest edition of the Commonwealth Fund’s Scorecard on State Health System Performance. The report annually ranks states’ health systems based on how well they provide high-quality, accessible, and equitable health care. And for the first time, the scorecard includes measures for evaluating reproductive care and women’s health.

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Congress Eyes PBMs in Drug Pricing Reforms
Congress is again taking on high drug prices, this time by focusing on pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs. These third-party intermediaries, which negotiate price discounts with drug manufacturers and manage drug benefits on behalf of employers and other payers, have come under scrutiny for their role in drug price inflation. Erin Slifer and Alyssa Llamas of Impact Health Policy Partners describe the proposals currently on the table.

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FEATURED CHART



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Harm Reduction Could Save Lives in the U.S. Overdose Epidemic

Since 2019, drug overdose fatalities have jumped 50 percent in the United States. Not enough Americans have access to effective addiction treatment, and many people don’t access harm-reduction tools to stay safe when using drugs. On To the Point, the Commonwealth Fund’s Evan Gumas and Jesse Baumgartner consider what we can learn from international approaches to harm reduction. These strategies include everything from distributing the overdose reversal drug naloxone and sterile syringes to establishing safe consumption sites.

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Observations from Poland’s Abortion Ban

Poland — once a refuge for Europeans seeking abortion care — is one of four countries that has been rolling back abortion rights since the 1990s. Another is the United States. In International Insights, the Commonwealth Fund’s Munira Gunja writes that it’s important for U.S. policymakers to be aware of Poland’s experience, particularly with the U.S. already in the throes of a maternal health crisis. “[B]y restricting access to vital health care services, we might see higher infant and maternal mortality rates, as well as physicians rendered unable to perform lifesaving procedures.”

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Primary Care Payment Reform: Learning from the U.K.

Primary care in the United States lags other high-income countries in terms of access to services, quality, and comprehensiveness of care. On To the Point, Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow Becks Fisher and the Fund’s Corinne Lewis explore how the U.K.’s value-based payment model supports primary care and the lessons that U.S. policymakers can take away. One crucial area in which the U.K. model falls short, they say, is in appropriately risk-adjusting for social and economic deprivation, which has deepened health inequities in the country.

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Addressing Generic Drug Shortages in Hospitals

Market-driven shortages of generic sterile injectable (GSI) drugs for hospital care can affect patients in emergency rooms, ICUs, cancer clinics, and outpatient elective surgery departments. In a Commonwealth Fund–sponsored report published by The Hamilton Project, researchers from the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative on Health Policy propose a targeted, government-funded buffer inventory to prevent supply chain shocks for GSI drugs of particular importance to public health.

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Supreme Court Preserves Rights of Medicaid Beneficiaries

The U.S. Supreme Court recently issued a landmark ruling with critical implications for Medicaid beneficiaries and their families. Health law experts Sara Rosenbaum and MaryBeth Musumeci explain the origins of the case, which centered on a 150-year-old federal law that allows people to sue when deprived of federal rights, including those guaranteed through public welfare programs like Medicaid. The authors say the case could not have been decided at a more crucial time, as Medicaid’s continuous-enrollment protections enacted during the pandemic wind down and millions of beneficiaries are at risk of losing their coverage.

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Betancourt Recognized by Modern Healthcare

Commonwealth Fund President Joseph R. Betancourt, M.D., has been named by Modern Healthcare as one of its “50 Most Influential Clinical Executives.” The program honors licensed clinicians in executive roles who their peers, and the publication’s senior editors, say are paving the way to better health through their executive responsibility, leadership qualities, innovation, community service, and achievements inside and outside their respective organizations. [Subscription required for access.]

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Inequities in Cancer Care and Outcomes

Washington Post national health reporter Akilah Johnson spoke in a “WP Live” segment with Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Joseph R. Betancourt, M.D., president of the Commonwealth Fund, about the drivers of health disparities and how they can impact cancer care in the United States.

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PLAY THE EPISODE

Commonwealth Fund Grantees Win Equity Award

Commonwealth Fund–supported researchers Jacob Wallace, Chima D. Ndumele, and colleagues were honored with the Yale School of Public Health’s Achieving Health Equity Research Award for their JAMA Health Forum article
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“Disparities in Health Care Spending and Utilization Among Black and White Medicaid Enrollees.” The article was one of five papers chosen out of more than 1,200 published by the school’s faculty.





Affordable, quality health care. For everyone.

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