Policy Research

New brief details the procedure of insurers investigating policyholders’ medical history after a policy has been issued.

Research identifies five options for controlling health care costs while increasing quality.

Analysis looks at implications of reform concepts for children and considers the potential risks of shifting children who currently have public coverage into plans sold in a new exchange.

If health insurance companies submitted competitive bids to offer Medicare coverage, President Obama says the government could save billions of dollars.

Health Policy Briefs provide clear, accessible overviews of timely and important health policy topics. The briefs are geared to policy-makers, congressional staffers, and others who need short, jargon-free explanations of health policy basics.

This paper discusses the role that tax law can play in the implementation of health reform. The tax code has served as the primary vehicle for subsidizing health care in the United States, with subsidies averaging $245 billion per year. Use of the tax code to support or implement health policy is extremely common in proposals at both the federal and state levels.

Massachusetts continues to move forward on comprehensive health reform, with uninsurance at historically low levels.This policy brief provides a supplement to the recent Health Affairs article, examining geographic and racial/ethnic differences in access to care and affordability of care across Massachusetts in fall 2008.

In this 2006 to 2007 project, Michael A. Stoto, Ph.D., and a team of researchers and public health officials at RAND Corporation and elsewhere conducted case studies of five regional public health structures and then compared them.

This evaluation, led by Judith Woodridge of Mathematica Policy Research (MPR), looks at an initiative designed and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to establish state-based consumer health advocacy networks.

This interactive story highlights three complementary initiatives to expand coverage.