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The Commonwealth Fund Connection

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




May 13, 2022

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How Isolation Impacts Adults with High Health Care Needs
The loneliness and isolation caused by two years of pandemic lockdowns, closures, and other public health measures have had a particularly severe impact on older adults with high health care needs. As the Commonwealth Fund’s Celli Horstman and Corinne Lewis report on To the Point, high-need older adults who feel isolated are more likely to be in fair or poor health, be diagnosed with a mental health condition, or experience emotional distress.

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A Research and Policy Agenda for Addressing America’s Behavioral Health Care Crisis
Millions of Americans with mental health issues and substance use problems are not getting the care they need. To inform federal and state policymakers’ efforts to develop solutions, the Commonwealth Fund has committed to advancing behavioral health policy research activities in the following areas: promoting racial equity in behavioral health care access; integrating behavioral health services with primary care; strengthening and diversifying the behavioral health workforce; and leveraging Medicaid and Medicare to improve access for those with the greatest needs.

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What Climate Change Does to Our Health and Health Care
Worldwide, more than 5 million deaths a year are linked to climate change. Our new explainer looks at the impacts of climate change on health and health care. Learn how climate change affects people’s physical and mental health as well as the health care system, and what it means to have a climate-ready health care workforce.

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Everything You Need to Know About Medicare Advantage
By 2025, Medicare Advantage plans will enroll an estimated 35 million beneficiaries, accounting for half of total Medicare enrollment. It’s vital that policymakers, the media, and the public understand how these private plans work. With our new Medicare Advantage primer, you’ll understand how these plans differ from traditional Medicare coverage, how insurers are paid, issues around choice and competition, and how continued growth in plan enrollment might affect the Medicare program’s long-term sustainability.

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How the U.S. Could Fix Its Nursing Crisis
Nurses in the United States are experiencing burnout at unprecedented rates. Many are still processing the trauma of what they witnessed in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, staffing shortages are creating unmanageable workloads. On The Dose podcast, Rebecca Love talks about what it would take to fix the nursing crisis, including changes in nursing reimbursement and new ways of training and empowering nurses.

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Empowering Nurses to Improve Health Care
UCLA researchers report that in places where employers operate without much competition — for instance, rural towns where hospitals are the biggest employer —
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many workers, including nurses, aren’t reaping the wage gains their peers are seeing in less concentrated markets. In our recent Transforming Care feature, Martha Hostetter and Sarah Klein documented
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efforts to better value and reward nurses’ work as a way to bolster the workforce and empower nurses to help solve the problems plaguing health care.

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Cash Assistance Can Help People Cope with Medical Emergencies
The world’s two largest democracies, India and the United States, have vastly different health systems. But they share one striking similarity: people with low income face significant barriers getting care. On To the Point, the Commonwealth Fund’s Shanoor Seervai and Reginald D. Williams II and the Soondra Foundation’s Gayatri Mathur show how direct cash assistance can be a lifeline to poor people facing health emergencies.

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States Have Options for Controlling Rising Health Care Prices
It’s no secret that commercial health care prices are high and rising. With partisan division blocking policy efforts at the federal level, states have an opportunity to rein in costs. Writing on To the Point, the Commonwealth Fund’s Arnav Shah and Lovisa Gustafsson outline ways that state policymakers can stem the growth in private health care costs. They highlight options like “light touch” hospital price regulation, statewide spending growth targets, and population-based payment methods.

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Could Value-Based Pricing Be the Answer to High Drug Costs?
How can policymakers make prescription drugs more affordable to Americans while allowing manufacturers to continue to innovate and maintain a reasonable profit? Tufts University’s Patricia Synnott, Daniel Ollendorf, and Peter Neumann argue that drugs should be priced based on how much they improve patients’ lives relative to their cost. Such an approach could incentivize pharmaceutical manufacturers to develop more effective therapies and “ensure that Americans do not overpay for ineffective or marginal treatments.”

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David Blumenthal to Step Down as Commonwealth Fund President
David Blumenthal, M.D., will step down as president of the Commonwealth Fund at the end of 2022. Under his leadership, the Fund has introduced new initiatives, including a major effort to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health care practice, policy, and outcomes and an expansion of work in health care coverage and access and international health policy and practice innovations. “I have always believed that for an organization to remain vigorous and innovative, there must be periodic change in leadership,” said Blumenthal. “I am proud of the diverse and brilliant team we have assembled over the past 10 years and will miss the unique opportunity to make a difference that comes with being part of the Commonwealth Fund.”


Michael Drake, M.D., president of the University of California and Commonwealth Fund board chair, will lead a search committee to recruit Blumenthal’s successor. Inquiries should be directed to
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Egon Zehnder , the global leadership advisory firm that will manage the search.





Affordable, quality health care. For everyone.

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