'Consumer-Driven' Plans Not So Consumer-Friendly

Americans enrolled in "consumer-driven" health care--a new type of health coverage designed to make people more cost-conscious--are less satisfied with their health plans than those with comprehensive health insurance, a new survey finds. Read more »

Health Benefits Rare for Temps, Part-Timers

One of four workers in America work under contract or work part-time or temporary jobs. According to a new Fund report, such workers are often excluded from job-based health coverage, and the uninsured rate among these workers stands at a whopping 24 percent. Read more »

Are States Misusing Aid for High-Risk Pools?

Payments for high-risk pools intended to make coverage more available and accessible to the "uninsurable" seem to have primarily helped states improve their balance sheets, Fund researchers say. Read more »

Asking Patients About Race/Ethnicity: Right Ways and Wrong Ways

While collecting information on patients' race, ethnicity, and preferred language is crucial to hospitals and clinics, the way in which providers gather such potentially sensitive information is important to patients. Read more »

Choice Overrated, Visiting Economist Finds

Comparing her first experience navigating the American health system with a visit to Baskin-Robbins, a British health economist asks, "Can we treat health care like ice cream?" Read more »

Guidance for Bathing Patients with Dementia: Bathing Without a Battle

The "Bathing Without a Battle" CD and video offers practical techniques that families and caregivers can use to improve the experience of bathing people with dementia. Read more »

Items in Brief

• Care Guidelines Must Consider Benefits, Costs
• Long-Term Care Financing: A Shared Responsibility
• More Public Data Needed to Spur Improvements in Long-Term Care
• Sustaining an Innovation in Elder Care
• States Focusing on Kids' 'Healthy Mental Development'

Recent Commonwealth Fund reports and Fund-supported studies in the professional literature.

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