New on the Web 20: July 2003
We've collected information on several new reports and other resources available on the Web that we hope you'll find interesting and useful. Descriptions and links appear below.
The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law: "Making the Right Choices: Reforming Medicaid to Improve Outcomes for People Who Need Mental Health Care"
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: "Health Savings Accounts: A Costly Tax Cut That Could Weaken Employer-Based Health Insurance"
The Child Health Insurance Research Initiative: "Children's Dental Care Access In Medicaid: The Role of Medical Care Use and Dentist Participation"
Commonwealth Fund: "Right of Passage? Why Young Adults Become Uninsured and How New Policies Can Help"
The Georgetown University Long-Term Care Financing Project: "The 21st Century Challenge: Providing and Paying for Long-Term Care"
The Institute of Medicine: "HIdden Costs, Value Lost: Uninsurance in America"
Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured: "Covering the Uninsured: How Much Would It Cost?"
Kaiser Family Foundation: "The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program: Program Design, Recent Performance, and Implications for Medicare Reform," "Key Facts: Race, Ethnicity & Medical Care"
Public Citizen: "The Other Drug War 2003: Drug Companies Deploy and Army of 675 Lobbyists to Protect Profits"
Urban Institute: "Does the Health Care Safety Net Narrow the Access Gap?," "Hardship among the Uninsured: Choosing among Food, Housing, and Health Insurance"
From the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law:
Medicaid is the primary source of payment for most community-based mental health services and the only health coverage that finances a full range of the rehabilitative services needed by people with mental illness. Making the Right Choices: Reforming Medicaid to Improve Outcomes for People Who Need Mental Health Care analyzes recent proposals to change Medicaid from the perspective of adults and children with mental illness. The Issue Brief examines proposals that would do everything from reducing the range of available services states must provide to reducing the number of beneficiaries entitled to services. (July 2003)
From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
Health Savings Security Accounts: A Costly Tax Cut That Could Weaken Employer-Based Health Insurance details provisions in the House Medicare prescription bill that would create a new tax break in the form of Health Savings Security Accounts. These tax-advantaged personal savings accounts could be used to pay for out-of-pocket medical expenses. According to the report, however, the bill would cost $163 billion and would likely lead to major changes in employer-based health coverage that would adversely affect low-income, older, and sicker workers. (June 2003)
From the Child Health Insurance Research Initiative (CHIRI):
Tooth decay is one of the most preventable childhood diseases, yet dental care remains the most prevalent unmet health care need for children in the United States. A new Issue Brief, Children's Dental Care Access in Medicaid: The Role of Medical Care Use and Dentist Participation, reports on children's dental care use in the Alabama and Georgia Medicaid programs and strategies for improving access to dental care. Researchers found that less than 40 percent of Medicaid-enrolled children in the study states received dental care, which was typical of other states during the period covered by the study. (June 2003)
From The Commonwealth Fund:
Young adults between the ages of 19 and 29 represent one of the largest and fastest-growing segments of the population without health coverage. Rite of Passage? Why Young Adults Become Uninsured and How New Policies Can Help contends that jobs available to young adults often pay poorly or are temporary and typically do not provide health coverage. This Issue Brief assesses the scope of the health insurance problem facing young adults, its causes, implications, and what can be done about it. (May 2003)
From the Georgetown University Long-Term Care Financing Project:
The 21st Century Challenge: Providing and Paying for Long-Term Care is the title of the first conference in a series of events designed to establish a debate about the financing of long-term care. The conference included insights from caregivers, policymakers, and researchers about the challenges of providing and paying for long-term care. Kaisernetwork.org has provided a webcast and transcripts of speeches made at the conference. (May 2003)
From the Institute of Medicine:
The discontinuity in health coverage or lack of health coverage of millions of Americans every year entail costs for our society in lost health and longevity; financial risk, uncertainty, and anxiety within families with one or more uninsured members; financial stresses for and instability of health care providers and institutions in communities with high uninsured rates; and lost workforce productivity. Hidden Costs, Value Lost: Uninsurance in America, the fifth in a series of six reports on the impact of the medical insurance gap, tallies some of the most clearly identifiable economic and social costs of lack of insurance. The report asserts that allowing millions of Americans to go without health coverage costs the country between $65 and $130 billion every year. (June 2003)
From The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured:
Covering the Uninsured: How Much Would It Cost? presents the results of a study that was designed to provide benchmarks for evaluating the costs of alternative proposals to cover the uninsured. It provides two sets of cost estimates derived from medical spending patterns of lower- or middle-income people with private coverage and people with public coverage during the 1996-1998 period. The authors estimate that the cost of medical care provided to the newly insured would run between $34 and $69 billion per year if they were fully insured, depending on the approach taken. (June 2003)
From The Kaiser Family Foundation:
Key Facts: Race, Ethnicity & Medical Care provides a selective review of the literature that is intended to serve as a quick reference on racial and ethnic disparities in health status, health coverage, and health care access and quality. Topics covered include demographic characteristics, measures of health status, patterns of health coverage, access to primary and preventive care, and the use of specialty care for select diseases. Whenever possible, the data are stratified by race, ethnicity, and a measure of socioeconomic status. (June 2003)
The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) has recently been cited as a model for new Medicare prescription drug legislation. The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program: Program Design, Recent Performance, and Implications for Medicare Reform provides a basic description of the FEHBP structure, benefits, financing, and operations. It also discusses how FEHBP and Medicare compare in terms of benefits and health plan choices, whether the FEHBP model could provide savings for Medicare, how FEHBP compares to Medicare+Choice, and FEHBP's recent performance in terms of cost, benefit changes, and access to providers. (May 2003)
From Public Citizen:
The Other Drug War 2003: Drug Companies Deploy an Army of 675 Lobbyists to Protect Profits exposes the drug industry's lobbying barrage on Capitol Hill. The study found that the industry employs 675 Washington lobbyists, 51 percent of whom have revolving-door connections to those in office. The industry also spent a record $91.4 million on lobbying activities in 2002, an 11.6 percent increase from 2001. (June 2003)
From the Urban Institute:
Understanding why some low-income people may not be willing to spend much on health coverage requires a better appreciation of the circumstances of those people, especially the extent to which they face other financial hardships. The debate around alternative policies to increase health coverage seldom considers the competing demands on family budgets. Hardship among the Uninsured: Choosing among Food, Housing, and Health Insurance explores the extent to which nonelderly, uninsured adults also face other hardships in their daily lives and argues that strategies to increase health coverage need to allow for these competing demands on limited resources. (May 2003)
Does the Health Care Safety Net Narrow the Access Gap? presents the results of a study that examined the role of the health care safety net in increasing health care use and access for uninsured adults and in narrowing the gap between the uninsured and the insured. The study found little variation in use of and access to health services among low-income adults when examining local safety net conditions, but it found large differences according to insurance status. The authors therefore argue that expanding health coverage would be a more effective tool for increasing health care use and access among low-income adults than expanding the safety net. (April 2003)
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