ACA
kkrisberg | March 15, 2017As the Republicans push forward their abysmal Affordable Care Act replacement, much of the talk surrounding its impact focuses on insurance numbers and premium hikes. Those things are certainly important. But this is more important: The Republican plan will cause unnecessary suffering and preventable death.
How do we know this? Let’s start with the Congressional Budget Office report that scored the Republican replacement plan, titled the American Health Care Act. That report estimates that if the Republican plan is enacted, 14 million more people would be uninsured by 2018 than would have…
kkrisberg | January 27, 2017
We’re just a humble little public health blog. But we can still do our part. If you or someone you know need help getting health insurance coverage before next week’s enrollment deadline on Jan. 31, here are some good resources.
First, why do this? Because this week, the Trump administration abruptly canceled advertising and outreach scheduled to run during this final week of Affordable Care Act enrollment. Apparently, he even pulled ads that were already paid for. But, you can still enroll. According to Paul Demko at Politico:
(The Trump administration) is also halting all media outreach…
lborkowski | January 16, 2017As Congressional Republicans continue taking steps toward repealing the Affordable Care Act without providing a detailed, workable plan to replace it, more people are speaking out against ACA repeal.
GOP Governors John Kasich of Ohio and Rick Snyder of Michigan are speaking to journalists about how the ACA’s Medicaid expansion has helped their states. Governor Snyder explained to The Detroit News that the state accepted the Medicaid expansion but added requirements for recipients earning between 100% and 133% of the federal poverty level, and that the program is working and has the potential…
lborkowski | January 9, 2017Republicans in Congress are pressing forward with a plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act through a budget reconciliation process, which requires only 50 votes but can only eliminate the portions of the law that affect the federal budget. They don’t yet have a viable plan to replace it, so they’re pushing a “repeal and delay” strategy that would involve repealing the law now and asking voters to trust them that they’ll come up with something else in a few years (on top of the six they’ve already had). That something else would almost certainly involve skimpier coverage or the loss of…
kkrisberg | December 6, 2016At Stat, Eric Boodman reports on whether a Trump administration might deprive miners of compensation for disabilities related to black lung disease.
In particular, Boodman examines a little-known provision in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that shifted the burden of proof from miners and onto mining companies. In other words, if miners had spent at least 15 years underground and can prove a respiratory disability, it’s assumed to be an occupational illness. However, if the ACA is repealed in full — as candidate Trump promised on the campaign trail — that provision would go away as well, making…
kkrisberg | November 29, 2016The percentage of Americans who reported cost-related barriers to health care dropped from 37 percent in 2013 to 33 percent in 2016 — a change that directly corresponds to insurance expansions under the Affordable Care Act, a new study reports. On the flip side, Americans are still more likely than peers in other high-income nations to face financial obstacles to health care.
The study is based on findings from a survey of patients and providers in 11 countries and one that the Commonwealth Fund has been conducting annually since 1998. Those 11 countries are: Australia, Canada, France,…
kkrisberg | November 1, 2016Celeste Monforton and I are currently in Denver at the American Public Health Association's (APHA) 2016 Annual Meeting and Exposition — the year’s largest gathering of public health professionals. The meeting is packed with hundreds of scientific sessions, leading public health researchers and new findings on just about any public health topic you can imagine. Below are some highlights of the past few days, courtesy the APHA Annual Meeting Blog.
Trees don’t just make neighborhoods pretty. They can also save lives: With flowers in the spring, lush green leaves in the summer and changing colors…
kkrisberg | October 28, 2016While health policy hasn’t been at the forefront of this year’s presidential election, the next person to sit in the White House could have a transformative effect on health care access, affordability and inequity. Of course, with so many variables in play, it’s hard to predict what either candidate could realistically accomplish on the health care front. However, a new report might provide some insightful clues.
Published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the report complied results from 14 national public opinion polls from various sources and conducted as recently as…
kkrisberg | October 13, 2016If you look at the numbers, there’s no doubt that the Affordable Care Act is making a positive difference. In fact, just last month, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the nation’s uninsured rate had hit a record low. At the same time, the health reform law wasn’t intended as a silver bullet and a number of problems remain. One of those problems is known as “churning.”
“Churning” describes changes in a person’s insurance coverage over time and it’s an issue that can have a significant impact on a patient’s continuity of care and health status. Of course, changes in insurance coverage are…
lborkowski | September 26, 2016A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Maryn McKenna at National Geographic’s Germination: How We'll Tackle Diseases That Are Becoming Untreatable (“The United Nations just declared antibiotic resistance “the greatest and most urgent global risk.” Here’s what they’re going to do about it.”)
Kelli Garcia in US News & World Report: We Can’t Wait: With Congress unconscionably failing to act, states must move quickly to protect pregnant women from Zika
Kelly Heyboer at NJ.com: The Invisible Workforce: Death, discrimination and despair in N.J.'s temp industry
Alex Campbell and Katie J.M. Baker…
lborkowski | August 22, 2016A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Alicia Menendez at Fusion: Pregnant in the time of Zika: How Congress failed women like me
Vann R. Newkirk II in The Atlantic: Can free markets keep people healthy?
Brittney Martin in the Dallas Morning News: Texas' rate of pregnancy-related deaths nearly doubles
Sara Kliff and Ezra Klein at Vox: Public option? Status quo? Collapse? What comes next for Obamacare
Peggy Lowe at NPR/ Harvest Media: Working "The Chain," Slaughterhouse Workers Face Lifelong Injuries
David Dobbs in National Geographic: Why There's New Hope About Ending Blindness
lborkowski | August 8, 2016In MMWR, Brian Ward and Lindsey Black of the National Center for Health Statistics report that 25.7% of US adults have been diagnosed with multiple chronic conditions (MCC). In their analysis of data from the 2014 National Health Interview Survey, they examined rates of diagnoses of arthritis, asthma, cancer, COPD, coronary heart disease, diabetes, hepatitis, hypertension, stroke, or weak/failing kidneys.
It's not surprising that MCC prevalence varied by age; just 7.3% of those aged 18-44 had multiple chronic conditions, compared to 32.1% of those aged 45-64 and 61.6% of those aged 65 and up…
lborkowski | July 25, 2016A few of the recent pieces I’ve liked:
Clint Smith at the New Yorker: Racism, Stress, and Black Death
Maryn McKenna at Germination: CDC Director: ‘This Is No Way to Fight an Epidemic’
Natasha Geiling at ThinkProgress: Cleveland Is Not The Place For Mocking Environmental Justice
Jennifer Adaeze Okwerekwu at STAT: Why don’t medical schools teach us to confront racism and police brutality?
Dan Diamond at POLITICO: Pulse Check: Why Obama's 'public option' may disappoint (the complete podcast is well worth a listen)
Anne Friedman at The Cut: Injured at Work? Your Gender Could Affect How Much You’…
kkrisberg | May 31, 2016Everything’s bigger in Texas — including the number of Texans without health insurance. But thanks to the Affordable Care Act, the percentage of uninsured Texas residents has dropped by 30 percent. That means the Texas uninsured rate has hit its lowest point in nearly two decades.
In a new issue brief from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, researchers report that the Texas uninsured rate dropped from 26 percent in September 2013 — before the ACA’s first open enrollment period — to 18 percent as of March 2016. The decline was observed among every age, income and ethnic group…
lborkowski | May 18, 2016Maryland Governor Larry Hogan has signed into law the Contraceptive Equity Act, which puts the state at the forefront of efforts to reduce insurance-plan barriers to accessing multiple forms of contraception. When the law takes effect in 2018, insurance plans regulated by Maryland that provide contraceptive coverage will no longer be allowed to charge co-payments for FDA-approved contraceptive drugs, procedures, and devices. This list include vasectomies and emergency-contraceptive pills.
The law will also allow women to receive six months of oral contraceptives at a time, and will prohibit…
kkrisberg | May 5, 2016Just in time for Mother’s Day comes more good news from the Affordable Care Act: the rate of uninsured moms caring for kids younger than 19 has dropped to its lowest rate in nearly 20 years.
According to a new analysis from the Urban Institute released this month, the rate of uninsured moms fell 3.8 percentage points between 2013 and 2014 — that’s a decline about three times as large as any of the previous year-to-year changes observed since 1997. In sheer numbers, that means about 1.6 million moms gained health insurance. To give you even more perspective, consider that uninsurance rates…
kkrisberg | March 25, 2016Here’s what states get when they expand Medicaid: more savings, more revenue, more jobs, more access to care for their communities.
That’s the conclusion from a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation issue brief released this month that compared the differences between states that chose to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act and those that opted out. Under the health reform law, the federal government will pay the entire cost of expanding state Medicaid programs up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level through 2016, phasing down to 90 percent by 2020. It’s a pretty good…
kkrisberg | November 25, 2015Public health insurance programs often get a bad rap, despite a growing positive evidence base on their patient care, quality and outcomes. Earlier this month, another study emerged that found Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program not only outperform private insurance when it comes to children’s preventive care, they can serve as a model of comprehensive children’s coverage.
Published in JAMA Pediatrics, the study is based on data from the U.S. National Surveys of Children’s Health between 2003 and 2012 — a sample of more than 80,000 children up to age 17 living in households…
kkrisberg | October 30, 2015When it comes to immunization rates in the United States, the story is a mixed one. Among children, we’ve absolutely excelled. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers the nation’s childhood vaccination rate as one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. But when it comes to American adults — 50,000 of whom die every year from vaccine-preventable diseases — it’s a very different story.
Earlier this year, CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report reported that uptake of recommended adult immunizations remains low and is far below Healthy…
kkrisberg | October 22, 2015More good news from the Affordable Care Act: Since it became the law of the land, uninsurance disparities between white, black and Hispanic residents have narrowed significantly.
In a study published this month in the journal Health Affairs, researchers found that by the fourth quarter of 2014, the uninsurance rate for Hispanic adults had fallen to 31.8 percent from about 40 percent in the third quarter of 2013. During the same time period, uninsurance among black adults declined from 25.5 percent to 17.2 percent, while uninsurance among white adults fell from 14.8 percent to 10.5 percent.…