Released in November, 2000, this 51-page report "set out to identify plan-level practices that contribute to a positive experience for plan members." Using data from the Medicare Managed Care Consumer Assessment of Health Plans Survey, the study examines nine plans with "different patterns of performance operating in five geographic markets." Not surprisingly, the study found that patients rated...

On Tuesday May 16th, 2000, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation released a nationwide report of "Americans' attitudes about the growing number of people without health insurance -- and about the problems faced by the uninsured." The complete survey, available at the Henry J. Kaiser foundation site, gives data on Americans's perceptions about the uninsured and...

Issued by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) Public Policy Institute, this report explores the inadequacies of the state government's review process of long-term care insurance premiums, and offers recommendations to remedy these problems. Authors Steven Lutzky, Lisa Maria B. Alecxih, and Ryan Foreman of the Lewin Group suggest that states require premium reviews by an actuary with...

The vulnerability of many Medicare beneficiaries is revealed in this report, recently placed online by the Commonwealth Fund. Medicare currently insures 34 million older Americans as well as five million permanently disabled people under 65. Not only is this population "generally at high risk for acute and chronic illness," but 68 percent have incomes below 200 percent of the poverty level or have...

The Health Care Financing Administration of the US Department of Health and Human Services provides this site--a consumer gateway to information about Medicare, a national health insurance program that covers 37 million Americans, mostly over age 65. Current highlights include a managed care section that contains Medicare Compare, an interactive database that allows users to compare (according to...

Provided by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, State Health Facts discloses important health and health policy information for all fifty states and US territories. Data are divided into ten categories -- demographics and the economy, health status, health coverage and uninsured, medicaid and CHIP, medicare, health costs and budgets, managed care and health insurance, providers and service use,...

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program with a new state-run Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and ended the automatic link between eligibility for cash assistance and eligibility for Medicaid for poor families. Since then, a number of new policies and programs seeking to...

General Robert Wood Johnson (of Johnson & Johnson renown) was an adamant supporter of training for hospital administrators, and out of this interest came the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Today, the Foundation is "devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans." From their headquarters in Princeton, the Foundation supports research into human capital, childhood...