New on the Web 5: January 2002
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.
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: "Expanding Family Coverage: States' Medicaid Eligibility Policies for Working Families in the Year 2000," New Web Page on State-Level Policy Work from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
The Commonwealth Fund: "Commonwealth Fund Quarterly," "Security Matters: How Instability in Health Insurance Puts U.S. Workers at Risk," "Maintaining Health Insurance During a Recession: Likely COBRA Eligibility," "Experiences of Working-Age Adults in the Individual Insurance Market"
HHS: "Delivering on the Promise: Preliminary Report of Federal Agencies' Actions to Eliminate Barriers and Promote Community Integration"
Health Resources and Services Administration: "Child Health USA 2001"
Health Systems Research: "Mental and Physical Health: Barriers to and Strategies for Improved Integration"
Kaiser Family Foundation, Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured: "Rising Unemployment and the Uninsured," "Medicaid Coverage During Times of Rising Unemployment," "Trends in Health Plans Serving Medicaid-2000 Update," "The Women's Health Data Book: A Profile of Women's Health in the United States," "Medicare Chart Book"
National Center for Education in Maternal and Child Health: "Compilations of Resources on Child Health Insurance, Children with Special Health Care Needs, and Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities"
National Women's Law Center, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and Oregon Health and Science University: "Making the Grade on Women's Health: A National and State-By-State Report Card"
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
The Center has launched a section on their Web site that provides centralized access to all of their state-level policy work. The page lists their most recent reports at the top and organizes the remaining information according to subject area, including: state budget and tax policy, state welfare and TANF issues, health policy, low-income housing, food assistance, and immigrants. Their state-focused reports examine issues across states and often contain state-by-state data and analysis. (January 2002)
Expanding Family Coverage: States' Medicaid Eligibility Policies for Working Families in the Year 2000 reports on the results of a survey undertaken by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to better understand the actions states have taken to increase health insurance coverage for parents. Researchers surveyed Medicaid eligibility staff from all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, on the Medicaid eligibility rules the states applied to families with children. Generally, the data in this report show that a substantial number of low-income parents lack health insurance, and the authors note that the current recession and state budgetary problems are likely to make it harder for states to address lack of health coverage within their borders. (December 2001)
The Commonwealth Fund
The Commonwealth Fund presents the results of their 2001 Health Insurance Survey in Security Matters: How Instability in Health Insurance Puts U.S. Workers at Risk. The survey focuses on health insurance stability throughout the year and the extent to which lacking insurance during the year affects access to care, financial security, and confidence in the health care system. The interviews revealed that adults without health insurance at any time during the past year often had difficulty obtaining care when sick; many of those surveyed "had gone without physician-recommended tests, treatment, or prescribed medications." (December 2001)
More detailed findings of the 2001 Health Insurance Survey are presented in two separate Issue Briefs, Maintaining Health Insurance During a Recession: Likely COBRA Eligibility and Experiences of Working-Age Adults in the Individual Insurance Market.
The fall edition of the Commonwealth Fund Quarterly, a compilation of current work in health policy and practice, has been released. It includes a cover story on the Medicare+Choice program, as well as articles on the need for a Medicare drug benefit, problems women face when attempting to obtain health coverage, and the kinds of help small companies need to provide health coverage to their workers. (Fall 2001)
HHS
In February 2001 President Bush announced his New Freedom Initiative, part of a nationwide effort to remove barriers to community living for people with disabilities. In June he created Executive Order 13217: Community-Based Alternatives for Individuals with Disabilities, which requested that federal agencies work together to identify and address barriers to community integration. Delivering on the Promise: Preliminary Report of Federal Agencies' Actions to Eliminate Barriers and Promote Community Integration is the status report of federal efforts to meet the President's charge; the report also presents a summary of the actions that federal agencies propose to take in numerous areas, including health care structure and financing, personal assistance, direct care services and community workers, and caregiver and family support. (December 2001)
Health Resources and Services Administration
The Health Resources and Services Administration's Maternal and Child Health Bureau has released Child Health USA 2001, its 12th annual report on the health status and service needs of the nation's children. To assess the Bureau's progress toward achieving its vision of a nation where all people enjoy equal access to quality health care, the Bureau compiled this report of secondary data for 59 health status indicators, including health care financing, physician visits, and hospital utilization, as well as state-specific data. The report provides both graphical and textual summaries of data and addresses long-term trends where applicable. (2001)
Health Systems Research
In its role as a partner in the National Policy Center for Children with Special Health Care Needs, Health Systems Research, Inc. conducted a qualitative analysis of five sites across the country serving children with special health care needs (CSHCN). The study explored the sites' approaches to providing integrated mental and physical health care services for CSHCN and their families, and it includes recommendations for addressing major barriers to integration of these services. The results of this study are reported in Mental and Physical Health: Barriers to and Strategies for Improved Integration (Volume 1 is a synthesis of study results and Volume 2 contains the five case studies). (December 2001)
Kaiser Family Foundation, Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured
The Kaiser Family Foundation and its Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured have released two new fact sheets that demonstrate how specific changes in the unemployment rate affect both the number of uninsured Americans and the demand for Medicaid coverage. In "Rising Unemployment and the Uninsured", Kaiser presents its analysis showing that, for every percentage point increase in the unemployment rate, 860,000 people will become uninsured. (December 2001)
Medicaid Coverage During Times of Rising Unemployment discusses how much an increase in unemployment would be likely to increase Medicaid enrollment and state Medicaid spending. (December 2001)
The Women's Health Data Book: A Profile of Women's Health in the United States, from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Jacobs Institute for Women's Health, is the third edition of a report designed to provide readers with a current, comprehensive, and reliable compilation of data on women's health. The report includes chapters on the impact of social and economic factors on women's health, chronic conditions, mental health, violence against women, and an expanded chapter on access, utilization, and quality of health care. New topics in that chapter include preventive health services, physician counseling on selected health issues, and a discussion of quality measurement. (December 2001)
An increasing number of commercial health plans began to exit from the Medicaid program in 1997. Trends in Health Plans Serving Medicaid-2000 Update, a new report from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, updates Kaiser's previously published work describing the trends in commercial health plan participation in Medicaid managed care and the characteristics and roles of Medicaid-dominated plans. It also includes new analyses of the performance of Medicaid-dominated and commercial plans, and on the extent to which health plans are restricting their Medicaid service areas at the county level within states as well as exiting from Medicaid in all counties in a state. (November 2001)
The Kaiser Family Foundation has released the 2001 edition of its Medicare Chart Book, which provides data on a range of topics pertaining to the Medicare program and the people it serves. The Chart Book includes information on financing Medicare, Medicare beneficiaries, Medicare spending, Medicare and prescription drugs, the Medicare+Choice program, and supplemental insurance. It also includes the Medicare fact sheets that Kaiser published in 2001. (Fall 2001)
National Center for Education in Maternal and Child Health
The National Center for Education in Maternal and Child Health has created knowledge paths on several maternal and child health topics. The paths include selections of recent high-quality resources and tools for staying abreast of new developments, including links to Web sites, electronic publications, databases, discussion groups, citations for journal articles, and other print resources. These paths focus on several health-related topics, including "Child Health Insurance and Access to Care," "Children with Special Health Care Needs," and "Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health." (June-December 2001)
National Women's Law Center, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and Oregon Health and Science University
Making the Grade on Women's Health: A National and State-By-State Report Card assesses and compares women's health nationally and in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The report includes chapters on cardiovascular health; the federal policy agenda on women's health (including women's access to health care services); key health disparities by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability; and data and research needs. The authors conclude that women's health "is compromised by many factors, and key among them is lack of access to appropriate care, whether because women lack insurance, live in a medically underserved area or do not know how to obtain needed services." (December 2001)
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