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The

Commonwealth

Fund Connection

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


January 15, 2021

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COVID
COVID-19


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Keeping Medicaid Enrollees Covered Once the Health Emergency Ends

Federal Medicaid payments to states have been temporarily boosted to address surging health care needs, provided states ensure that beneficiaries remain enrolled continuously throughout the COVID-19 crisis. In a new brief, Medicaid policy expert Sara Rosenbaum argues for retaining these continuous enrollment protections once the federal public health emergency period officially ends.

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Many Employers Continue to Pay Health Insurance for Laid-Off Workers

Data indicate that about half of individuals who became unemployed between February and June 2020 also lost their health coverage. Economists Paul Fronstin and Stephen A. Woodbury identify the reason why even more didn’t become uninsured: many employers continued to provide premium support to their laid-off workers. As pandemic shutdowns continue, however, the loss of employer-sponsored coverage will likely increase, the authors warn.

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International Health News Brief: Special Issue on COVID-19 Protection and Recovery

How have other countries prepared for rollout of COVID-19 vaccines? And what are they doing to accelerate economic recovery? Find answers to these and other questions in the latest issue of International Health News Brief, which also looks into how health systems are leveraging telehealth to safeguard patients and providers and what nursing homes are doing to prepare for future COVID-19 waves.

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What It’s Like to Run a University in a Pandemic

What are universities doing to keep students safe — and learning — on and off campus during the pandemic? On the The Dose podcast, Michael Drake, M.D., president of the University of California and chairman of the Commonwealth Fund’s board of directors, explains how the nation’s largest university system is navigating the various tradeoffs involved.

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Other Recent Publications


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Health Care in 2020: Year in Review

At first glance, there was only one health care story in 2020: the devastation inflicted by COVID-19. But there have been a few silver linings as well, including the development of coronavirus vaccines at record speed. In other news, additional holdout states opted to expand their Medicaid programs — just as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) once again landed before the Supreme Court. Read a roundup of the year’s most significant health care events by the Fund’s Shanoor Seervai and David Blumenthal, M.D.

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Predictions and Prescriptions for Health Care in 2021

What can we expect for U.S. health care in 2021? On To the Point, Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal, M.D., and colleagues Elizabeth Fowler and Rachel Nuzum offer their health care predictions and prescriptions for the year ahead, including a greater sense of normalcy once a critical mass of people has been vaccinated against the coronavirus.

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Advancing a Federal Public Option

President-elect Joe Biden has said he wants to offer Americans the choice of a public health insurance option alongside commercial plans. In exploring how Biden could advance this goal, health policy expert Billy Wynne notes that the new administration could use existing waiver authority under Section 1332 of the ACA to grant states flexibility and funding to pursue a public option.

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The Fate of Medicaid Work Requirement Experiments

While the Supreme Court announced it will hear a case on Medicaid work requirement experiments, the incoming administration appears certain to reverse course on both pending and approved state demonstrations. But health law expert Sara Rosenbaum says the Court may focus on a larger issue: whether Section 1115 of the Social Security Act gives federal officials the power to “fundamentally transform Medicaid from a public insurance program into one that effectively forces certain beneficiaries to seek workplace benefits instead.”

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Protecting Consumers from Short-Term Health Insurance Plans

Short-term health insurance plans that lack important consumer protections like preexisting condition coverage have flourished under the Trump administration. Georgetown University’s Dania Palanker and colleagues describe the many deficiencies of short-term insurance plans and the Biden administration’s options for addressing them.

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Jost: A Health Care Regulatory Agenda for the Biden Administration

A major shift in national health policy is coming. On To the Point, health law expert Timothy S. Jost outlines changes the new administration and Democratic Congress could implement to strengthen the ACA and reverse Trump-era regulations that undermined the law. Jost says “the presidency has significant authority to bring about policy change and President-elect Biden can be expected to use it.”

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Transforming Care: Understanding and Addressing Medical Mistrust Among Black Americans

For generations, racism and mistreatment at the hands of medical professionals have left many Black patients distrustful of the health care system. Now many are wary of taking a COVID-19 vaccine. In taking on this topic, the latest issue of Transforming Care draws lessons from clinical encounters where trust plays a critical role — like childbirth — to suggest ways of building Black Americans’ faith in health care.

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Estimating Primary Care Practices’ Losses

A
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Health Affairs study estimated that drops in patient volume at primary care practices last spring led to average revenue losses of nearly $68,000 per physician. In a recent feature, the Commonwealth Fund’s Martha Hostetter and Sarah Klein spoke with leaders of primary care and other ambulatory care practices to learn
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how they were coping with operating losses and other disruptions from the pandemic while continuing to serve patients.



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Policy Recommendations for Reducing Maternal Health Disparities

The Health Care Transformation Task Force, a Commonwealth Fund–supported consortium that brings together patients, payers, providers and purchasers to align public and private sector efforts in value, recently released its report Payment Policy Levers to Address Maternal Health. Available on the task force’s Maternal Health Hub, the report outlines recommendations for policymakers to address maternal health disparities by extending postpartum coverage, advocating for pay parity, expanding value-based payment and care delivery, and advancing health equity.

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To Fix U.S. Health Care, It Will Take More Than Just Employers

“No matter how smart and innovative they may be in their core businesses, employers cannot go it alone when it comes to reforming our dysfunctional health care system,” says David Blumenthal, M.D., commenting on the recent decision by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase to close Haven, their venture aimed at transforming U.S. health care. Writing in Harvard Business Review, Blumenthal argues that “the overriding lesson of Haven’s failure is that if employers wish to make the health care sector perform better for their employees, they will have to ally with the one purchaser that has market power everywhere: the federal government and its Medicare and Medicaid programs.”

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Affordable, quality health care. For everyone.

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