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The Commonwealth Fund Connection

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




April 30, 2021

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COVID-19


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Vox’s “Pandemic Playbook”: How Countries Across the Globe Responded to COVID

Some nations have addressed the COVID-19 pandemic relatively well, while others have suffered an immense toll of disease and death. Vox Media’s “The Pandemic Playbook,” a series developed with support from the Commonwealth Fund, explores the ways some countries have built a successful pandemic response. The six features focus on South Korea, Germany, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, Senegal, and the United States.

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READ MORE

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India’s Health System Collapse: A Failure of Leadership

India is in the throes of the world’s worst COVID-19 crisis. What explains this sudden surge, and what can India — and the rest of the world — do to quell it? On To the Point, the Commonwealth Fund’s Shanoor Seervai and Arnav Shah argue that a failure of leadership and an anemic health care infrastructure are driving the crisis. While foreign aid may help in the short term, India’s underresourced health system will remain susceptible to collapse without significant investment, the authors say.

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Other Recent Publications


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State-Based Marketplaces Ramp Up for Expanded Subsidized Health Coverage

The American Rescue Plan’s $24.4 billion in enhanced premium subsidies for marketplace health plans will likely make this coverage attractive for many consumers who currently have insurance from other sources. Georgetown University’s Sabrina Corlette and Rachel Schwab explore the steps that state-based marketplaces can take to make sure this new assistance reaches all who are eligible.

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Affordable Health Care Is Fundamental to Economic Security

The American Families Plan, if enacted, would increase access to affordable health coverage for millions of Americans. One of the plan’s key changes is to make the recently expanded subsidies for marketplace plans permanent. The Commonwealth Fund’s Sara Collins explains on To the Point how additional changes would reduce deductibles in marketplace plans and provide coverage to the 2 million uninsured residents of states that haven’t expanded Medicaid.

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The ACA’s “Family Glitch” Is Making Health Insurance Unaffordable for Millions

Under the Affordable Care Act, people are ineligible for the law’s insurance premium subsidies for marketplace plans if their employer offers affordable coverage. But the determination of what’s affordable is based only on the employee’s costs. Even if adding family to the plan makes coverage prohibitively expensive, those family members are still ineligible for subsidies. Health care law experts Christina L. Goe and Dania Palanker show how what’s come to be known as the family glitch is barring low-income families from accessing affordable marketplace coverage.

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How Do Insurance Agents Influence Medicare Beneficiaries’ Plan Choices?

In choosing among Medicare plan options, beneficiaries can draw upon an array of resources and tools, including licensed Medicare agents or brokers. In a new report, researchers led by Riaz Ali explore how these agents can shape consumers’ Medicare choices. The report finds that while nearly all Medicare Advantage and Part D prescription drug plans contract with them, agents are not required to represent all available plans or inform consumers of all their options.

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Why Are So Many Medicare Patients Being Diagnosed with Severe Sepsis?

From 2008 to 2017, cases of severe sepsis among Medicare patients nearly tripled. But during this same period, cases of pneumonia and less-severe heart failure declined. In a review of the most frequent and fastest-growing inpatient episodes among Medicare beneficiaries, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine’s Melinda Buntin and colleagues find that payment incentives — and not demographic changes — are likely the driving force behind the shift in diagnosis patterns.

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What Will the Biden–Harris Administration Do for Women’s Health?

Many of the policies the Biden–Harris administration has initiated in its first three months to strengthen the nation’s social safety net will have an outsized impact on women — particularly women of color. On the latest episode of The Dose podcast, Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, discusses how plans to guarantee paid sick leave, shore up childcare, and address the maternal health crisis, among other policies, show that the administration clearly recognizes the ways that women’s health and economic security are intertwined.

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LISTEN HERE

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Could Surprise Billing Payments Lead to Inflation in Health Spending?

The federal No Surprises Act was designed to protect consumers from “surprise” medical bills from out-of-network providers, and the law has a method for determining how much those providers receive. Meanwhile, 18 states already have their own payment mechanism in place. Jack Hoadley and Kevin Lucia of Georgetown University examine the implications of these various payment approaches for health care costs and insurance premium trends.

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How Uncompensated Care Pool Waivers Undermine Health Coverage

In its final weeks, the Trump administration approved unprecedented 10-year Medicaid waivers for three states that have not expanded Medicaid: Florida, Tennessee, and Texas. The waivers allow the use of Medicaid funds to pay hospitals for care provided to the uninsured. But these uncompensated-care pools aren’t an adequate substitute for insurance coverage, says Manatt Health’s Cindy Mann, who believes the waivers could significantly set back health coverage in these states for years to come.

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Making It Easier for Clinicians to Tread Opioid Addiction

Late last month, the Biden administration released
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new guidelines making it easier for physicians and other clinicians to prescribe the drug buprenorphine to treat opioid addiction. Recently Transforming Care
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profiled efforts to encourage primary care clinicians to offer buprenorphine and other services to care for patients with opioid use disorder.
Watch “Critical Care: America vs. the World” — a PBS NewsHour Special

Some 30 million Americans still have no health insurance, and health outcomes in the U.S. are worse than in many other countries. The recently aired PBS NewsHour special “
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Critical Care: America vs. the World ” takes viewers on a global tour comparing how the U.S. and other countries organize, provide, and pay for health care. The one-hour program, developed with support from the Commonwealth Fund, features interviews with Brown University’s Ashish Jha, M.D., and Princeton University’s Tsung-Mei Cheng.
The Cost of Care: Podcast Series Searches for Solutions to America’s Health Care Problems

Health economist David Smith lost his father, sister, and brother to the same deadly epidemic, and he’s devoted his career to exploring whether their deaths were preventable. On The Cost of Care, a new podcast series from Lemonada Media supported by the Commonwealth Fund, Smith and a host of patients, medical experts, and policymakers discuss ways to fix U.S. health care.
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Listen to the first four episodes and subscribe to the series.

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STAT Special Report: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Health Care

Although artificial intelligence (AI) has enormous potential to improve the quality of health care, enable early diagnosis of diseases, and reduce costs, it could also exacerbate disparities, endanger patient privacy, and perpetuate bias. In a new report supported by the Commonwealth Fund, STAT’s Erin Brodwin and Casey Ross explore the possibilities and pitfalls of AI in health care, detailing how these technologies are being used and the regulatory gaps that may stand in the way. (Note: Some information is required to access the paper.)

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READ MORE
Aspen Ideas: Health — Dismantling Systemic Racism in Health Care

Listen to the Commonwealth Fund’s Laurie Zephyrin, M.D., discuss ways to confront and dismantle systemic racism in health care with Amna Nawaz, senior national correspondent for PBS NewsHour, at this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival. (Click on the small yellow marker at 29:57 of the video to
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go directly to the interview .)





Affordable, quality health care. For everyone.

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