Herman Cain’s ascendant Presidential campaign brings into focus the limited health policy thinking that has dominated the campaign so far. Here are our current major health policy challenges: Reversing the trend toward lower investments in the public health and prevention activities that have accounted for half of our increased longevity in the last century; Assuring fair coverage of the chronic conditions, including mental illness, cardiovascular disease, and cancers, that affect 60% of our population; Giving even the uninsured 16% of our population access to high quality, comprehensive, integrated primary, specialty, and hospital care; and Figuring out how best to pay for all this. Despite the urgency of these challenges, the current health policy debate can be condensed into a four word sound bite – “Repeal Obamacare Individual Mandate.” Here are the specifics of what the candidates have been talking about the past couple of weeks. Mit...
An occasional column focusing on federal, state, and local health policy