Health Reform Trends, Research and Analysis
Health Reform Trends provides analyses into assorted health care issues in the United States. With the aging U.S. population, there will be a significant increase in demand for health care services. Under the status quo, these demands will place an extremely heavy burden not only on Federal and state governments but on citizens as health care costs continue to rise faster than inflation, wages, salaries, and benefits.
That U.S. health care is in crisis is fairly well accepted. Less accepted is what is needed to fix it. But to fix anything, it helps to know more precisely what is broken. Many of these reports were written during congressional development of the Affordable Care Act. Even though reform is now law, it is still important to understand the factual issues to aid in implementing or amending the law.
If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, the dozens of graphs in these reports will hopefully help identify issues. Many graphs highlight trends that portend future directions. Other graphs compare services between high and low, best and worst, for very large sample groups. When large differences exist for the same services, something is likely broken.
The analyses on this site rely primarily on data provided by non-partisan government agencies, long-established research institutions, and enterprises whose business is to analyze aspects of health care, be it health insurance or hospitals or health care providers. These include Centers for Disease Control (CDC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Federal Reserve, Census Bureau, Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Social Security, U.S. Senate Website, U.S. Congress Website, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Research institutions include primarily Kaiser Foundation and Dartmouth College. It may reference other analyses done, and those authors are duly noted.
This website contains a number of in-depth analyses as well as shorter commentaries that may offer opinions. Their difference is similar to a newspaper’s news and editorial sections. There are multiple ways to navigate to find articles that are explained in the “Help” tab.
Health Reform Trends, Research and Analysis 