The Commonwealth Fund Connection serves as a roundup of Fund publications, charts, and multimedia added to the Commonwealth Fund Web site in the last two weeks, and also offers links to other timely content.
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What's New
An overwhelming majority—88 percent—of young adults across the political spectrum think it is important for Congress and the President to pass health reform legislation that would ensure affordable health insurance for all and improve health care, according to a Commonwealth Fund survey released today. The survey found that nearly half—45 percent—or approximately 20 million young adults between the ages of 19 and 29 were uninsured at some time during the past year. Read more »
Recent Releases
This Commonwealth Fund report, updated today, analyzes the similarities, differences, potential impacts, and costs of the three comprehensive health reform bills passed by key U.S. congressional committees. Also see interactive tables for side-by-side comparisons of the system reform and insurance provisions. Read more »
In a new report, the Fund's Cathy Schoen and AcademyHealth's David Helms and Amanda Folsom describe Germany and the Netherland's use of quasi-governmental authorities to achieve the goals of better access, quality, and efficiency in health care. Read the report to learn more about the insights these two nations can lend to the U.S. health reform debate. Read more »
This analysis, coauthored by Harvard University's David Cutler and The Commonwealth Fund's Karen Davis and Kristof Stremikis, finds evidence that the cost-containing impacts of the Senate and House health reform proposals could be even greater than previous analyses have shown. Read more »
The vast majority of primary care physicians work in practices that see too few Medicare patients annually to produce statistically reliable performance assessments, according to a study supported by The Commonwealth Fund and the National Institute on Aging and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Authored by David J. Nyweide, Ph.D., and colleagues, the study concludes that Medicare's current method of measuring ambulatory care quality may not be effective for most primary care physicians. Read more »
This Commonwealth Fund–supported study in Inquiry shows that medical groups that receive bonuses for attaining certain levels of quality and patient satisfaction are more likely than other groups to offer similar incentives to their physicians. Read more »
Why Not the Best Update
Visit WhyNotTheBest.org to access new types of hospital performance data through an improved comparison tool. In addition to the process-of-care "core" measures and patient experience measures, the redesigned site now includes new hospital performance data—on readmission rates, mortality rates, and reimbursement, all as reported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Read more »
New on the Web
Watch a video of a Dec. 7, 2009, webcast that explored what Medicare beneficiaries think of the program, beneficiaries' out-of-pocket costs and coverage choices, and Medicare's long-term prospects. Speakers included: Bruce Vladeck, Ph.D., senior adviser to Nexera, Inc., a consulting subsidiary of the Greater New York Hospital Association, and former administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration; John Rother, executive vice president of policy and strategy for AARP; and Michelle Andrews, who writes about health care for the New York Times, CBS MoneyWatch.com, and Money. The webcast is the latest installment in the "Talking Health" series produced by the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ), The Commonwealth Fund, and the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Journalism. Read more »