Health Policy Center, independent research for better health policy: The Urban Institute

Report: Many states lag in implementing healthcare law, The Hill - (01/25/2012)

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute said Monday that 15 states have made "little or no progress" implementing a key piece of the new law — an insurance exchange where individuals and small businesses can buy private insurance.
 
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But the Urban Institute analysis released Monday isn't as upbeat. It says there are major discrepancies in how much progress states have made, and that the most resistant states have the most to lose.

Should Everyone Be Required to Have Health Insurance?,Wall Street Journal - (January 24, 2012)

But let's be clear. Uninsured individuals who need care, particularly catastrophically expensive care, generally receive these services anyway. A decision not to pay for insurance—to become a free rider—leads hospitals and other providers to charge other patients more to make up the difference. People shouldn't have the freedom to shift the burden to everybody else.

And it's a real burden. Yes, uncompensated care in 2008 as measured by the Urban Institute was a modest proportion of total health spending in the U.S. But when you're talking about health care, "modest" is still a lot of money. In 2008, 2.2% of total spending equaled $56 billion.

Editorial: Finding a cure for 'charity care' ills, Star Tribune - (January 23, 2012)

A new study from the respected Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute offers further evidence why those concerned with individual responsibility will celebrate the mandate's legal survival.

Obama's health overhaul lags in many states, Boston.com - (January 23, 2012)

"There will be something there, but if it doesn't mesh with the state's culture and if the state is not really supporting it, that certainly won't help it succeed," said Urban Institute senior researcher Matthew Buettgens.

Junk Food: The Bane of Health and Health Providers, Hospitals and Health Networks - (January 9, 2012)

The impact of this plague has been documented in study after study. One such report is "Reducing Obesity: Policy Strategies from the Tobacco Wars," which was released in 2009 by Carolyn L. Engelhard and Arthur Garson Jr. of the University of Virginia and Stan Dorn of the Urban Institute.

Engelhard and Garson cited a 2008 Congressional Budget Office report that said per capita health care spending rises by 34 percent when an individual is obese and by 70 percent when an individual is morbidly obese. More than one-quarter of increased medical costs between 1987 and 2001 involved obesity-related expenditures, the report noted.

Reform: 65% of employers will drop health plans in 2014 if . . .  HR Morning - (January 5, 2012)

White House officials questioned the validity of the studies. They cited two other studies — one from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and one from the Urban Institute — that both projected the reform law will have little effect on employer-sponsored plans.

Hospice Turns Months-to-Live Patient Into Years of Abusing Drugs, Bloomberg News - (January 3, 2012)

The discharge of 200,000 hospice patients raises the question of whether they were really dying in the first place, said Robert Berenson, a fellow at the Urban Institute and the vice chairman of Medpac, an advisory commission to Congress on health-care policy.

Health reform after 2014: Not-so-universal coverage, American Medical News - (January 2, 2012)

The health reform law's coverage expansion will vary somewhat by state, but each region of the U.S. is expected to see its uninsured population shrink by roughly half, according to a March 2011 analysis by the Urban Institute, a think tank. About 30 million people are expected to obtain health coverage through private health plans or Medicaid by the end of the decade, leaving about 20 million without coverage.

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