Employer-Based Health Coverage Slides With Economy

Mike Magee According to a report from the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), health coverage for employees is sliding down with the economy. “During a recession, some employers will drop coverage, some will increase the worker share of the premium, and some may change eligibility requirements. Structural changes in the economy during a recession, […]

Springtime In Vermont: Health Policy Is Blooming!

Mike Magee It’s springtime in Vermont. And when it comes to health policy, we haven’t seen this much action since Howard Dean MD was governor.Let’s begin with Governor Pete Shumlin’s signing of a bill today to establish a single-payer plan for the state’s 620,000 residents.(1) Physician leader Deb Richter believes that a little over half […]

The Pull and Push of Personalized Health Care

Ralph Snyderman ORIGINAL SOURCE My interest in personalized health care began approximately a dozen years ago when as Chancellor for Health Affairs at Duke University, I realized that emerging sciences and technologies were creating medical capabilities never before known. Through the power of genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, systems biology, and bioinformatics, one could begin to predict […]

Health Workforce Plans: Fuzzy Futures?

Mike Magee Workforce Issues in health care have become a health policy career track over the past two decades. The issue has been studied and re-studied, usually as an addendem to the status-quo. The most recent study, from the Alliance for Health Reform with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation goes a bit […]

Slaying The “Death Panel” Bull: Taking Control of Your End-of-Life Decisions

Mike Magee This Saturday, April 16, 2011 is National Healthcare Decisions Day – a day set aside to encourage families throughout America to discuss with each other how much care and what kind of care they would like as they approach the end of their lives.(1) Why advanced planning? Because there is a good chance […]

Inspiring The US Innovation Engine For Health Care: President Obama’s Visit To Intel

Eric Dishman I am on a plane returning from the annual HIMSS conference on health information technologies. As I watch the borderless states go by far below, I can see the lines and circles of our interstates and highways, which previous generations had the vision and audacity to create for us. Even with the depressing […]

When It Comes To End-Of-Life Decisions, Which Of These Two Women Do You Trust?

Mike Magee When 2008 GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin came out with her “death panels”, most of us who had worked with and advocated for “Living Wills”, “Advanced Directives” and end-of -life discussions never thought she would be taken seriously, even though there was a past history to this distortion.(1) We thought the governor’s remarks […]

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