Wednesday, August 10, 2022 | The Latest Research, Commentary, And News From Health Affairs
Dear John,
We are now accepting applications for the 2023 Health Equity Fellowship for Trainees (HEFT)! The Fellowship is part of Health Affairs’ national initiative to advance racial equity in health policy and health services scholarly publishing.
Applications are due September 19, 2022. Apply today!
Health Spending Growth
Health policy changes at the federal and state level affect state health care spending differently. Changes
mandated by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and, specifically, variation in the expansion of Medicaid have substantially impacted spending in recent years.
The federal government’s estimates of state-level health expenditures, the State Health Expenditure Accounts, extend to only 2014. Building on these estimates, Emily Johnson and coauthors estimate state spending through 2019 in their new Health Affairs article.
The authors identify dramatic variation across US state spending—largely due to income and consumer prices—as well as consistent increases in spending across all states and growth in differences between states.
Between 2013 and 2019, after adjusting for inflation, “annualized per person spending growth for each state ranged from 1.0 percent in Washington, D.C., to 4.2 percent in South Dakota.”
“Income explained the largest fraction of variation in health spending per person, at 25.3 percent,” they conclude.
Read more analysis about US health spending by becoming a Health Affairs Insider, where you'll be able to sign up for our periodic newsletter on health spending.
Today in Health Affairs Forefront, Nisarg Patel writes that, nearly five years after the U.S. FDA cleared the first prescription digital therapeutic (PDT), there is still neither a Medicare benefit category nor a physician fee schedule for these products.
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Bamboo Health 988
Implementation
988, the new three-digit dialing code routing callers to the Mental Health Crisis Lifeline, is live. States must comply with federal law and develop infrastructure to support their communities’ 988 services. Bamboo Health is here to be the partner state government leaders need to support that plan.
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