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The Commonwealth Fund Connection

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




February 18, 2022

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Experts Discuss the Need for Changes to Medicare Advantage
Enrollment in private Medicare Advantage plans has doubled over the past decade and continues to grow. But the plans’ complex benefit offerings and design can make it challenging for beneficiaries to make informed decisions — and for federal policymakers to set rules for how plans should be paid and regulated. To explore the challenges and opportunities surrounding Medicare Advantage, the Commonwealth Fund and Arnold Ventures have partnered on a six-part series on To the Point based on conversations with some of the nation’s leading Medicare experts. We begin with posts on Medicare Advantage plan payment and risk adjustment.

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Urgent Action Needed to Address America’s Spiraling Overdose Crisis
Approximately 92,000 Americans died from a drug overdose in 2020, with deaths spiking after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although overdose deaths subsided for a while, recent data suggest that they spiked again during the first half of 2021. On To the Point, the Commonwealth Fund’s Jesse Baumgartner and David Radley look at this spiraling crisis and discuss a range of treatment and harm-reduction actions government can take to temper the situation.

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Managing Future Pandemics Will Require Greater Federal Authority
The United States accounts for one-third of the world’s recorded COVID-19 deaths. Writing in The Hill, the Commonwealth Fund’s David Blumenthal, M.D., and Brown University’s James Morone argue that the U.S. is simply not organized to control a pandemic. No state on its own can manage the complications of global monitoring, testing protocols, and international supply chains. Centralized authority, the authors say, is needed — and that will take changes in executive authority, congressional process, and bureaucratic capacity.

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Race Matters — Arriving at More Equitable Health Policy
Social programs like Medicaid are supposed to help people, but often they reproduce racial inequities — and sometimes create them. That’s because policymakers can’t always see the impact their decisions have on people of color. On the latest episode of The Dose podcast, Cornell’s Jamila Michener talks about a tool she developed to help legislators and government officials identify when and how they should be thinking about racism. She also explains how it can be applied to Medicaid’s transportation benefit specifically, and to health policy more broadly.

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Strategies to Make a Health System Antiracist
An article in the February issue of Health Affairs describes a
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multiyear, multimillion-dollar effort to make Mass General Brigham, Massachusetts’ largest health system, antiracist. An
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October 2021 report by Commonwealth Fund researchers features strategies used by Mass General Brigham and seven other academic medical centers to reduce health disparities, create more equitable workplaces, and invest in communities of color.

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Toward Continuous Coverage for People with Medicaid
As part of the COVID-19 public health emergency declared in 2020, Congress required states to maintain coverage for Medicaid enrollees as a condition of receiving enhanced federal funds. When the emergency ends, there will be an unwinding of that requirement. Health policy expert Cindy Mann explores key provisions of the Build Back Better Act, currently stalled in the Senate, that would stabilize coverage for children and birthing people in the postpartum period.

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New Steps to Ensure Adequacy of Marketplace Plan Provider Networks
The Trump administration halted oversight of federal standards for “network adequacy” in Affordable Care Act marketplace plans. Justin Giovannelli of Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms examines a proposal from the Biden administration to restore supervision of provider networks in those plans. The measures would create specific quantitative measures of adequacy, including travel time and distance standards as well as limits on appointment wait times.

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Webinar: Standards for Advanced Primary Care in Medicaid Managed Care
States often promote enhanced primary care capabilities through standards for primary care practices serving Medicaid beneficiaries. Medicaid programs across the country have implemented such programs, either using patient-centered medical home models established by accreditation organizations or creating their own state-specific standards to address the unique needs and challenges of their population. A Commonwealth Fund–sponsored webinar on Tuesday, February 22, from 2:00–3:00 p.m. will explore how states can develop and promote strong practice-level primary care standards within managed care. The webinar, hosted by the Center for Health Care Strategies, will include a particular focus on high-quality and equitable pediatric care.

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