Setting a National Minimum Standard for Health Benefits: How Do State Benefit Mandates Compare With Benefits in Large-Group Plans?

Based on a comparison between states' minimum health benefit mandates and those for federal employees, considers whether a proposed federal standard would require more or less generous coverage than is state-mandated

Realizing Health Reform's Potential: How the Affordable Care Act Will Strengthen Primary Care and Benefit Patients, Providers, and Payers

Examines issues in primary care and outlines the 2010 healthcare reform law's provisions to strengthen it, including temporary hikes in Medicare and Medicaid payments and support for innovations in care delivery and primary care workforce development

Finding Resources for Health Reform and Bending the Health Care Cost Curve

Examines policy options for slowing healthcare spending growth, improving outcomes, and financing comprehensive reform, including changes to Medicare Advantage and hospital pay-for-performance. Compares their estimated budget impact over ten years

The North Dakota Experience: Achieving High-Performance Health Care Through Rural Innovation and Cooperation

Explores how North Dakota has met the healthcare challenges of rural communities with support for primary care and the idea of a medical home, organization of care through coordination and cooperation networks, and the innovative use of technology

Coming Out of Crisis: Patient Experiences in Primary Care in New Orleans, Four Years Post-Katrina

Examines the network of neighborhood clinics funded with federal, state, and local money that emerged after Hurricane Katrina as a model for serving vulnerable populations. Looks at access, communication, chronic illnesses management, and preventive care

How Health Care Reform Can Lower the Costs of Insurance Administration

Examines the sources of U.S. insurance administration costs and estimates potential cost savings from the creation of a national insurance exchange to replace the individual and small-group markets as part of a public-private approach to reform

The Comprehensive Congressional Health Reform Bills of 2009: A Look at Health Insurance, Delivery System, and Financing Provisions

Provides an overview of the key provisions of the House and Senate healthcare reform bills that are essential to a high-performance health system. Compares approaches to health insurance reforms, health system reforms, and revenue sources and financing

Groundwater exchange pools in Los Angeles: An innovative example of adaptive management

Across California, Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) are devising plans to reduce long-term overdraft. As part of the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, GSAs will submit plans in 2020-2022, which detail strategies to bring groundwater use into balance by 2040. Planning processes must assemble stakeholders and estimate sustainable yields of groundwater, quantify existing pumping, describe future options to limit overdraft, and identify funding. GSAs are actively searching for ways to stretch limited supplies and sustainably use the underground storage space created by decades of overdraft, drawing on lessons of previous regional agreements