The Milbank Quarterly Opinion

As private equity firms have bought up billions of dollars in medical practices, home care agencies, and more over the last two decades, they have become a force in US health care. In a new Opinion, John E. McDonough of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health chronicles the increasing role of private equity firms in the health care economy and its negative impact on patient mortality, patient costs, jobs, quality of care, and facilities closure.   More

Callahan recommends leveraging the bottom-up, intergovernmental approach of the public health field to bring an equity lens to infrastructure projects and build the credibility of the public health field following the Covid-19 pandemic.   More

Rather than focusing on “clinical non-inferiority,” or whether the reform lowers spending without negatively affecting outcomes, the authors propose focusing first on improving health first and second on lowering the implications for spending second.   More

The newly signed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) can be seen as an exercise in continuous policy improvement involving two key parts of federal health law: Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  More

We have become so acclimated to bad news that when the Senate recently passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) with its huge health and climate provisions many were skeptical.  More

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed into law by President Biden with great fanfare, promises major health policy gains: the largest-ever federal investment in climate reform; a three-year extension of enhanced premium subsidies that make Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace insurance more affordable to lower- and moderate-income Americans; and landmark Medicare prescription drug pricing reforms.  More

On August 17th, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky acknowledged the CDC’s flawed response to the COVID-19 pandemic and announced an agency-wide restructuring.  More

Although funding and access to health care have long been important issues in American public policy, far less attention has been paid to issues relating to public health.  More

State variation in Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care is exacerbating transgender health disparities observed in low-income populations.  More

For decades, corporate mergers and consolidations in the US health care system were like the weather—complain all you want because you can’t do anything about them.   More