A Pragmatic Approach to Medicaid Reform: Increasing Sustainability, Flexibility, and Value for Medical Spending

A series of proposals at the federal level have focused on Medicaid, the healthcare coverage program for low-income people that goes by the name "Medi-Cal" in California. There has been an intense focus, in particular, on the budgetary cost of coverage through this program. Therefore, whether one believes enrollment in the program needs to be expanded or curtailed, it is essential to increase the affordability of the care that the program finances. This brief lays out some key statistics and considerations—particularly related to the impact of Medi-Cal on the state economy—that policymakers should take into account. It also advances a series of policy recommendations aimed at increasing both the quality of the care Medicaid finances, as well as the fiscal sustainability of the program

Replication data for: Essays on Elections

This dissertation includes three essays that explore the impact the electoral process has on political elites and the decisions they make. Each essay explores elections at a different level and within a different branch of government. First, I analyze state-level judicial elections and their impact on legal outcomes. Although policymakers and scholars frequently debate the merits of differing systems of judicial selection, it is unclear whether differing forms of elections produce differing substantive legal outcomes. I use data from nearly 7000 criminal appeals between 1995 and 1998 and find that a state’s form of judicial election—retention, partisan, or nonpartisan—has a strong and independent effect on the like lihood that a defendant will have his lower court conviction overturned. Specifically, I conclude that criminal convictions are most likely to be overturned in states with nonpartisan judicial elections and least likely to be overturned in states with partisan judicial elections. Second, I explore the impact that jurisprudential rules relating to redistricting have on grassroots political elites. I argue that these rules shaped the somewhat unorthodox mobilization strategy and tactics undertaken by an Asian American community-based organization in the months leading up to, and immediately following, a 1998 California legislative election. Through process-tracing, I demonstrate that the coalition’s activities were motivated by a desire to make the case for an A sian-influence or majority-Asian legislative district. This analysis also contributes to the relative paucity of research on the mobilization and political behavior of Asian American voters. Finally, I model county-level, swing state candidate appearances during the 2008 presidential campaign. Although presidential candidates are known to make appearances in swing states, the existing literature provides no answer to the question of where, within these states, candidates spend their time. I find that while the Republican candidates pursued a traditional strategy of mobilizing their base through these appearances, the Democratic ticket pursued a very different strategy, wh ich focused less on partisanship and more on the demographic characteristics of the counties they visited. The substantially different electoral outcomes produced by this divergence in strategies have major implications for similarly-situated campaigns in future elections. <br /

International Healthcare Systems and the US Health Reform Debate

The ongoing challenges within the US healthcare system include its high costs, uneven access, and tremendous complexity. These deficits regularly generate calls for full-scale health reform from both sides of the political aisle. Republicans in Washington DC have consistently proposed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replace it with a less regulated system; most progressives in California would like to do away with the ACA in favor of "single-payer" healthcare modeled on the Canadian system. When considering the desirability of reforms, whether they come from the right or the left, it makes sense to look at how other developed countries are tackling their own healthcare challenges