Category Archives: Health care reform

Pandemic changes, or pauses, state approaches to health coverage

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Joanne Kenen

About Joanne Kenen

Joanne Kenen, (@JoanneKenen) the health editor at Politico, is AHCJ’s topic leader on health reform and curates related material at healthjournalism.org. She welcomes questions and suggestions on health reform resources and tip sheets at joanne@healthjournalism.org. Follow her on Facebook.

Photo: Yuri Samoilov via Flickr

Before the new coronavirus pandemic, expanding health insurance was a hot topic in the presidential campaign. States were considering a wide range of health coverage policies, including Medicaid expansion, Medicaid block grants, public options, new subsidies and coverage of immigrants.

Much of the state policymaking has been on hold or is phasing in more slowly as the nation’s health system focuses on COVID-19. States are facing enormous financial stresses due both to the pandemic and the subseqent economic crisis. Continue reading →

Fate of COBRA reforms in the HEROES Act

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Joanne Kenen

About Joanne Kenen

Joanne Kenen, (@JoanneKenen) the health editor at Politico, is AHCJ’s topic leader on health reform and curates related material at healthjournalism.org. She welcomes questions and suggestions on health reform resources and tip sheets at joanne@healthjournalism.org. Follow her on Facebook.

Photo: Jernej Furman via Flickr

Democrats in Congress have several ways that they’d like to address the millions of newly unemployed and uninsured Americans during the coronavirus pandemic, including widely opening enrollment for the Affordable Care Act.

One measure that made it into the recent $3 trillion stimulus bill known as the HEROES Act (Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions) would subsidize COBRA. That would enable newly unemployed people keep the insurance they had gotten on the job without having to shoulder the entire cost as typical. Taking over the entire premium can be considerable: Employer premiums average $7,188 for a single person and $20,576 for a family of four, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and COBRA adds a 2% surcharge. Continue reading →

Ask the experts: What do you want to know about COVID-19?

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Bara Vaida

About Bara Vaida

Bara Vaida (@barav) is AHCJ's core topic leader on infectious diseases. An independent journalist, she has written extensively about health policy and infectious diseases. Her work has appeared in outlets that include the National Journal, Agence France-Presse, Bloomberg News, McClatchy News Service, MSNBC, NPR, Politico and The Washington Post.

webcastThe COVID-19 pandemic is quickly evolving and finding up-to-date answers to questions from experts has been challenging for many journalists.

On Friday, March 27, join two experts from Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who will be answering your questions about what is known about the virus, how the health system is responding, how the outbreak might end and strategies for journalists to combat misinformation.

To ensure that we address your questions, you are invited to submit them ahead of time using this form. Continue reading →

AHCJ announces winners of 2019 health journalism contest

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Pia Christensen

About Pia Christensen

Pia Christensen (@AHCJ_Pia) is the managing editor/online services for AHCJ. She manages the content and development of healthjournalism.org, coordinates AHCJ's social media efforts and edits and manages production of association guides, programs and newsletters.

Awards for Excellence in Health Care JournalismInvestigations into flawed or corrupt health-care practices won many of the top honors in the Association of Health Care Journalists’ 2019 contest, for which results were announced today.

The Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism drew 454 entries, up 29% from the previous year, partly because of a surge in student-journalist entries.

This was the second year for the contest’s student category, designed to encourage and highlight work by young journalists.

Continue reading →

Congress, regulators offer financial relief for Americans seeking tests, treatment for new coronavirus

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Joseph Burns Bara Vaida

About Joseph Burns and Bara Vaida

Joseph Burns, a Massachusetts-based independent journalist, is AHCJ’s topic leader on health insurance. Bara Vaida is AHCJ's topic leader on infectious diseases. Her work has appeared in outlets that include MSNBC, NPR, Politico and The Washington Post.

Photo: Centers for Disease Control and PreventionThis is the CDC’s laboratory test kit for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

The just-passed multibillion-dollar Families First Coronavirus Response Act includes free diagnostic testing for the new COVID-19 illness — for those fortunate enough to get a test if needed. The law also includes paid sick leave, nutrition assistance and boosts unemployment benefits for Americans out of work due to the pandemic, as Barbara Sprunt reported for NPR.

President Trump signed the bill into law after the U.S. Senate passed it on Wednesday. The House of Representatives had approved it the previous week. Continue reading →

VOX series examines the approach of four countries to universal coverage.

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Joanne Kenen

About Joanne Kenen

Joanne Kenen, (@JoanneKenen) the health editor at Politico, is AHCJ’s topic leader on health reform and curates related material at healthjournalism.org. She welcomes questions and suggestions on health reform resources and tip sheets at joanne@healthjournalism.org. Follow her on Facebook.

Dylan Scott

In a new How I Did It essay, Dylan Scott of Vox explains how he and colleagues Ezra Klein and Tara Golshan created their multi-part series “Everybody Covered“ about how four countries accomplished universal health care. They also look at the state of Maryland, which has an all-payer system that may be a model for cost-containment in the U.S. The package, which contains both a series of articles and several podcasts, was supported by the Commonwealth Fund.

The series looks at Taiwan’s single-payer plan (which is arguably underfunded and which is not so beloved by its physicians), Australia’s public-private combo (with significant economic-based disparities), a “supercharged” Obamacare in the Netherlands (where it works partly because the country is not politically divisive) and Britain’s National Health Service. As Scott noted – there are always tradeoffs. Continue reading →