News and notes on universal health care coverage at the state and federal levels

The Century Foundation has posted a discussion among a panel of experts on universal coverage, focusing on state initiatives in Massachusetts, California and beyond.  Questions and comments are welcome and may be included in future iterations of the forum. 

One state with a recent foray into universal health care coverage is Washington.  See notes on its plan and links here.

At the federal level, there’s a bipartisan group of senators pushing health care access and coverage reforms (a tip of the hat to A Healthy Blog.) The group wants to (1) maintain public and private health coverage systems, (2) "modernize" tax treatment of health benefits (euphemism for "gut"), (3) let the states experiment, (4) promote prevention, (5) increase cost-effectiveness of chronic and end-of-life care, and (6) improve access to information on quality and cost of health care services.  While the group has a fair amount of firepower, and they seem to be saying the right sorts of things (mostly), it’s unclear whether wholesale changes such as these may be achieved anytime soon — and not just because we have a Republican in the White House and Democrats in control of Congress.

— David Harlow