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The
Commonwealth
Fund Connection
A roundup of recent Fund publications, charts, multimedia, and other timely content.
December 4, 2020
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COVID-19
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The Success of State Vaccination Efforts Will Depend a Lot on Federal Support
If history is any indication, states will require strong federal collaboration and support to ensure successful COVID-19 vaccination efforts. According to the Commonwealth Fund’s Jesse Baumgartner and colleagues, states’ adult vaccination rates for seasonal influenza in 2019 and for the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009–2010 fell well below the 70 percent threshold believed to be necessary to reach herd immunity. And nearly all states have reported significant racial and ethnic disparities in vaccination. The researchers also report that cumulative COVID-19 case rates are higher in many states with poor vaccination rates.
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READ MORE
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The Pandemic’s Long-Term Impact on Mental Health
Concerns are growing that the COVID-19 pandemic may have a long-term impact on mental health, with local jurisdictions citing increases in domestic violence calls, opioid overdoses, and crisis hotline use. On To the Point, Jacob C. Warren and K. Bryant Smalley of Mercer University say the pandemic has led millions of Americans to lose their health insurance and, consequently, their access to care. Rising stress and uncertainty have followed.
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Controlling the Coronavirus in American Indian Communities
Last month the Indian Health Service (IHS)
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announced its plan for distributing coronavirus vaccines to all IHS facilities, as well as tribally run clinics and Urban Indian Health Programs that chose to receive vaccines from the federal agency. Earlier this year, the Commonwealth Fund’s Martha Hostetter and Sarah Klein wrote about what’s worked to
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slow the spread of the coronavirus and mitigate its impacts in American Indian communities.
Other Recent Publications
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The Cost of Employer Insurance for Middle-Income Workers in Each State
Nearly 15 million Americans have lost their employer-sponsored health insurance since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. A Commonwealth Fund analysis provides a state-by-state look at how much insurance costs workers, in terms of premiums and deductibles and as a share of income, from 2010 to 2019 — right before the pandemic hit.
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How Will the Biden Administration Address Prescription Drug Pricing?
President-elect Joe Biden will have several options for reforming drug pricing when he takes office. The Commonwealth Fund’s Lovisa Gustafsson writes on To the Point that, as a starting point, Biden could pursue legislation using a House-passed measure that featured international reference pricing and government negotiation of drug prices. The new administration also could use rulemaking authority to promote the uptake of lower-cost, effective drugs, or to curb patent abuses.
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Can We Lower Drug Prices While Preserving Innovation?
How can the United States lower prices for prescription drugs while maintaining strong manufacturer incentives for new product innovation? Writing in Health Affairs, Steven Lieberman, Paul Ginsburg, and Kavita Patel provide key takeaways from a roundtable discussion among pharmaceutical and biotech executives, entrepreneurs, scientists, economists, and venture capitalists. The participants cited a number of options to consider, including lowering drug development costs, developing better measures of value for new drugs, and reducing prices in a systematic and predictable way.
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Differences in Value-Based Health Care Across Four Systems
To understand how country health system factors shape value-based health care (VBHC) initiatives, researchers led by Christer Mjaset, M.D., a 2019–20 Harkness/Norwegian Institute of Public Health Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice, assessed the implementation of core program elements in four different health systems. Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, the authors determined that “a key factor for VBHC implementation seems to be government involvement in care organization. Due to institutional legacies and divergent interests between providers, it is too complex for providers to realize full-fledged value-based systems themselves.”
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Next Steps in Chronic Care
Over the past six years, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Health Project, with support from the Commonwealth Fund, has developed policy recommendations to improve access to services, improve quality, and lower the cost of care for those with complex care needs, including those with chronic conditions. Congress enacted many of these recommendations as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, while others have been implemented through regulations or other agency guidance.
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READ MORE
Affordable, quality health care. For everyone.
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