Archive for January 2020

Within his first month in office, President Obama can already point to two important pieces of legislation that have been enacted into law. The first is the reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The second is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The reauthorization of SCHIP was hardly sur- prising. Two…

In what can only be described as a most unlikely achievement, Massachusetts—with a conservative Republican governor and a Democratic state legislature—was able to accomplish what no other state has been able to do to date: pass major healthcare reform legislation that provides essentially universal coverage. As the country contemplates its next moves in healthcare reform,…

Once again a Democratic president has made passage of healthcare reform a major domestic priority for his administration. The focus in Washington, as well as elsewhere, is on whether the Obama administration will be able to deliver on this election promise. Although it is far too early to know for sure, I think the odds…

Sorting through all of the charges and countercharges that have been raised against the various healthcare reform bills is a challenge as we enter what is likely to be the final critical period that will determine the fate of healthcare legislation in 2009. It’s probably not surprising that this is where we find ourselves. Few…

After focusing on healthcare reform for most of 2009, the House and the Senate are in the final stages of reconciling the differences among their various bills both within and between the two houses of Congress. Although it is too early to begin the post- mortems that will surely follow the final bill’s passage, a…

Now that healthcare reform legislation is the law of the land—at least version 1.0 of healthcare reform—the real work starts. As is the case for most new legislation, rules and regulations will need to be developed that implement the many aspects of the legislation that are not completely developed in the statutory language. Many of…

In early August, the trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds released their annual report about the current and projected status of the programs. Normally, the trustees release this report in the spring. However, they decided to delay their 2010 report by several months so they could incorporate into it the effects of…

As anyone who has followed the lengthy debate around the passage of the Affordable Care Act knows, comparative effectiveness research (CER) is now part of healthcare reform. As someone who has been pressing the importance of CER as an important building block toward “treating better and spending smarter,” I regard its inclusion in the legislation,…

With the election behind us and a split government ahead, the future of the nation’s health care remains very much in question. For months before the election, many of the newly elected Republicans made “repeal and replace” their mantra, and it is widely expected that legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act will be at the…

Almost a year after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, there continues to be massive uncertainty associated with what the law will mean for both the provider and the consumer communities. To a certain extent, this uncertainty is understandable, given the sheer scope of the legislation and countless new rules and regulations that…