Reimbursement Roulette: The Baucus Bill's Too Playful Approach to "Play-or-Pay" in Health Care Reform

Two of the three leading health care reform proposals being considered by Congress -- the House "Tri-Committee" health care reform legislation and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee's reform legislation -- include sensibly designed "play-or-pay" provisions that require employers to pay an assessment if they do not offer insurance to some or all of their employees. The third leading health care reform proposal -- the bill proposed by Sen. Max Baucus and currently under consideration by the Senate Finance Committee -- also includes a play-or-pay requirement, but it is poorly designed and would be unfair to employers, harmful to employees, and impose wasteful expenses on taxpayers

Who Pays for Health Care Reform?

In this second of three chapters on the distinctive policy dynamics of particular areas of social provision, Susan Giaimo addresses the issue of whether the success of the reformed welfare state in the shape of payers’ and policy makers’ cost‐containment projects have had as their price the sacrifice of equity and solidarity. These questions are explored through the lens of health care reform in Britain, Germany, and the US since the late 1980s: each a country with a distinctive health care system, which undertook major reform initiatives designed to control health care outlays, and addressed the efficiency and equity goals in markedly different ways. Section I provides a broad background to situate the contemporary politics of health care reform, explaining how and why health care systems in Western countries have come under the stress of increasing cost pressures even as governments and employers have become more apprehensive about the possible effects of the welfare state on economic competitiveness. Section 2 develops the argument in greater depth, explaining how existing health care and political systems provide different opportunities or constraints for payers and the state to pursue unilateral cost‐containment strategies, how health care institutions themselves shape policy preferences and strategies of payers, and how some systems require compromise solutions that reconcile equity with efficiency. Section 3 presents each country\u27s case, and the concluding section considers the broader lessons from health care reform for the contemporary politics of welfare state adjustment

Outcomes Assessment and Health Care Reform

Argues for the use of outcomes assessment in measuring cost-effectiveness and quality to capture the overall impact of multi-dimensional treatment strategies and to identify healthcare systems that both adopt appropriate technologies and perform well

Health-care Reform in Slovakia

Gesundheitsreform, Slowakei, Health care reform, Slovakia

Slovak Health-care Reform: Greater Privatization

The paper summarizes recent health-care reform in Slovakia and the reform's general rationale, provides a brief theoretical background, and describes the reform measures both adopted and proposed. The authors assess the early experience and the impact of the undertaken reform. The main feature of Slovak health-care reform has been the commercialization of the sector. While much of the reform is still in process, and is thus hard to quantify (for instance, direct expenditures by patients are increasing, while the revenues of certain interest groups are declining), many early steps have produced concrete improvements important toward securing social legitimacy.public expenditure; health care; reform

Reimbursement Roulette: The Baucus Bill’s Too Playful Approach to “Play-or-Pay” in Health Care Reform

Two of the three leading health care reform proposals being considered by Congress—the House “Tri-Committee” health care reform legislation and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s reform legislation—include sensibly designed “play-or-pay” provisions that require employers to pay an assessment if they do not offer insurance to some or all of their employees. The third leading health care reform proposal—the bill proposed by Sen. Max Baucus and currently under consideration by the Senate Finance Committee—also includes a play-or-pay requirement, but it is poorly designed and would be unfair to employers, harmful to employees, and impose wasteful expenses on taxpayers.health care

Public Health Promotion: Autonomy of the Emergency Nurse Practitioner

The purpose of this paper is to examine several key issues in health care reform. From the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 to the cholera epidemic in Haiti, global health care reform is necessary to promote health and wellness among all nations. There is an International shortage of nurses and nursing faculty. Among the providers, it is also necessary to examine autonomy of the most up and coming nurse provider: the emergency nurse practitioner

Comparison of Provisions from Colorado's Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform and Federal Health Care Reform

A new issue brief commissioned by The Colorado Trust, and authored by the two lead staff members of the Colorado's Blue Ribbon Commission on Healthcare Reform (the 208 Commission), Tracy L. Johnson, PhD, Health Policy Solutions and Sarah Schulte, MHSA, Schulte Consulting, shows that there is significant agreement between our state's recommendations and the new federal law