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A Weekly Health Policy Round Up From Health Affairs            

**October 11, 2020**

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IN THE JOURNAL

NEW ISSUE:
CHILDREN'S HEALTH

The October edition of Health Affairs is a theme issue on children's
health. As articles in the issue show, the US lags behind other
developed countries in key indicators of child health and well-being.
Studies in the issue provide a road map for future improvement.

The October issue was supported by Nemours, Blue Shield of California
Foundation, Children's Hospital Association, the Episcopal Health
Foundation, and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

Read the October 2020 table of contents.

L
isten
to an introduction to the issue from Editor-in-Chief Alan Weil.

Read "From the Editor-in-Chief."

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AHEAD OF PRINT

PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE

Health Benefits In 2020: Premiums In Employer-Sponsored Plans Grow 4
Percent; Employers Consider Responses To Pandemic

By Gary Claxton, Anthony Damico, Matthew Rae, Gregory Young, Daniel
McDermott, and Heidi Whitmore

The annual Kaiser Family Foundation Employer Health Benefits Survey is
the benchmark survey of the cost and coverage of employer-sponsored
health benefits in the United States. Read More >>

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IN THE JOURNAL

CHILDREN'S HEALTH

A Novel Health-Transportation Partnership Paves The Road For Young
Driver Safety Through Virtual Assessment

By Elizabeth A. Walshe, Daniel Romer, Venkatesh Kandadai, and Flaura K.
Winston

For young drivers, crash risk peaks immediately after licensure and
declines during the next two years, making the point of licensure an
important safety intervention opportunity. Legislation in Ohio
established a unique health-transportation partnership to identify
underprepared driver license applicants through a virtual driving
assessment system.
Read More >>

Listen to Flaura Winston and Elizabeth Walshe discuss Ohio's virtual
driving assessment system in the first episode of our new podcast
series, A Health Podyssey
.

Principles And Policies To Strengthen Child And Adolescent Health And
Well-Being

By James M. Perrin, Greg Duncan, Angela Diaz, and Kelly Kelleher

James Perrin and coauthors summarize and identify crosscutting themes in
four recent reports from the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine on strengthening child and adolescent health
and well-being. Focusing on poverty; mental, emotional, and behavioral
health; adolescence; and young family health and education, "the reports
make clear that many evidence-based solutions allowing changes to
current trajectories and outcomes already exist." Read More >>

CHILDREN'S HEALTH

Child Health As A National Security Issue: Obesity And Behavioral Health
Conditions Among Military Children

By Tracey Pérez Koehlmoos, Amanda Banaag, Cathaleen King Madsen, and
Terry Adirim

To build and maintain an effective US military force, at least 150,000
medically fit new personnel must be recruited annually. Because military
dependents are more likely to serve than the broader population of US
children, keeping them physically and mentally fit is important for
meeting military recruiting goals, and is therefore critical for US
national security. To evaluate the health of this group of young
Americans, Tracey Pérez Koehlmoos of the Uniformed Services University
of the Health Sciences and coauthors evaluated the Department of
Defense's Military Health System administrative data for almost half a
million (n=489,859) military dependents ages 13-18 for fiscal years
2017 and 2018. Read More >>

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COVID-19

Severe Staffing And Personal Protective Equipment Shortages Faced By
Nursing Homes During The COVID-19 Pandemic

By Brian E. McGarry, David C. Grabowski, and Michael L. Barnett

Brian McGarry and coauthors evaluated public data about staffing and
personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages between May and July 2020
from a new national database covering 98 percent of US nursing homes.
The authors found that more than one in five nursing homes reported a
severe shortage of PPE-with one week or less of available
supply-or a staffing shortage. Read More >>

THIS WEEK ON THE BLOG

COVID-19

Recognizing Frailties In How We Measure Health and Health Care-And
Charting A Pandemic-Resistant Path Forward

By Mohammed K. Ali and Carol M. Mangione (10/9/20)

The pandemic has accentuated disparities and fragmentation and laid bare
the inadequacies of health and health care measurement in the United
States. This realization should catalyze investments in equity,
interoperability, and patient-centered metrics and ecosystems that are
pandemic resistant and support integrated delivery, measurement, and
quality that aligns with the quadruple aim. Read More >>

How Maryland's Total Cost Of Care Model Has Helped Hospitals Manage
The COVID-19 Stress Test

By Chris L. Peterson and Dale N. Schumacher

Here we document how Maryland adjusted its policies-in collaboration
with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation-to successfully
respond to the pandemic's volume impacts and ensure hospitals'
financial stability. Read More >>

Health Care Claims Data May Be Useful For COVID-19 Research Despite
Significant Limitations

By Maimuna S. Majumder and Sherri Rose (10/6/20)

Claims-based COVID-19 studies have a role, but it is critical to
understand the limitations of these data. Using these data to answer
specific types of longitudinal questions requires deep knowledge of the
underlying processes that generated the data, regulatory changes,
provider behavior, and more to inform policy and decision making. Read
More >>

Mask Mandates: A Public Health Framework For Enforcement

By Rebekah Gee and Vin Gupta (10/5/20)

With uncertainty regarding an effective vaccine and no clear therapeutic
for COVID-19 in the pipeline, broad cooperation in masking is urgently
needed. With little time to waste, the time for a strategic and informed
enforcement strategy has come. Leveraging what's worked in the past is
critical, as several existing public health policies have a strong
enforcement mechanism already in place. Read More >>

Beyond Survival To Transformation: Investing In Safety-Net Innovation To
Address The Impacts Of COVID-19

By Urmimala Sarkar and Alice Hm Chen (10/5/20)

With appropriate federal investment and regulation, innovations spurred
by the pandemic can be adopted by safety-net systems and tailored to the
needs of specific vulnerable groups. Without it, those communities that
bear the greatest burden of COVID-19-related disease will only fall
further behind. Read More >>

SHORT SERIES: HIGHER HEALTH CARE VALUE POST-COVID-19

Establishing A Value-Based 'New Normal' For Telehealth

By Christina M. Cutter, Nicholas L. Berlin, and A. Mark Fendrick
(10/8/20)

Determination of the post-pandemic role of telehealth will be complex
and consequential, and should be grounded in a value-based approach.
This post capitalizes on the natural experiment afforded by the COVID-19
pandemic and proposes a value-driven telehealth policy and research
agenda. Read More >>

How The COVID-19 Pandemic Has Affected Provision Of Elective Services:
The Challenges Ahead

By Bruce Stuart (10/8/20)

How will the experience of not being able to access routine care affect
patients' longer-term behavior in seeking care? Will the economic
consequences of lost jobs, income, and health insurance further reduce
demand? What tactics will providers employ to build back patient
revenues? Will they move to further expand their market power? Read More
>>

FOLLOWING THE ACA
CSR Litigation, New Non-ACA Plan Decision

By Katie Keith (10/5/20)

This post summarizes insurers' requests for a rehearing in their
pursuit of full unpaid cost-sharing reduction payments and a district
court decision to sanction yet another alternative to Affordable Care
Act coverage. Read More >>

Tracking The Uninsured Rate In 2019 And 2020

By Katie Keith (10/7/20)

Federal data show that the uninsured rate has been rising since 2016 and
rose again in 2019. New analyses of the uninsured population in 2019
show that consumers were struggling with coverage affordability even
before the COVID-19 pandemic, and recent reports suggest a deepening
affordability crisis in 2020. Read More >>

WOMEN'S HEALTH

How RBG's Voice Shaped The Courts'-And America's-Views On
Women's Health For A Generation

By Elizabeth Tobin-Tyler (10/8/20)

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is known as an iconic US Supreme Court justice who
championed women's rights. A deeper dive into several of her opinions
shows her specific impact on women's health and describes how she
meticulously cited the medical, public health, and economic evidence
while raising the voice of everyday women. Read More >>

PUBLIC HEALTH

Misunderstood: How Public Health's Inability To Communicate Keeps
Communities Unhealthy

By Brian C. Castrucci, Ruth J. Katz, and Nat Kendall-Taylor (10/8/20)

FrameWorks Institute research finds that other sectors have a largely
negative or at best a narrow perception of public health professionals.
How can public health help leaders outside the field to appreciate the
strategic and collaborative facets of public health? Public health
professionals need to improve their communication skills-poor
communication has been a longstanding problem-and strengthen
cross-sector partnerships. In a pandemic such relationships are
critically important. Read More >>

SYSTEMS OF CARE

Distributing Provider Financial Aid To Create A More Efficient,
Equitable System

By Erica Socker, Alexandra Spratt, and Mark E. Miller (10/9/20)

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the US health care system was already
too expensive, too complex, and unfair to patients. While Congress
provided funding to hospitals and other providers to help them weather
this crisis, the billions of dollars poured into the system so far have
largely served only to shore up a broken and unfair system. We are
missing an opportunity to help shape the future health care system to be
more efficient and equitable. Read More >>

MEDICAID

Policies To Enhance Care Of Out-Of-State Pediatric Medicaid
Beneficiaries

By Nick Manetto, Joshua Greenberg, and Candace Reddy (10/6/20)

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services has been allowing states to waive certain requirements
for screening Medicaid and CHIP providers. These flexibilities, which
can reduce delays in care, should be extended beyond the public health
emergency, and a more permanent solution to streamlining provider
screening and enrollment should be pursued. 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
humanitarian relief organization that places power in the hands of local
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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