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Health coverage and costs are likely to be key issues in the 2008 presidential election, and The Commonwealth Fund plans a series of reports to inform the policy debate. The next Biennial Health Insurance Survey, to be conducted in 2007, will include questions about the public's attitudes on policies to expand health insurance. The Fund is partnering with Health Policy R&D and the Lewin Group to conduct an analysis of health care bills introduced in Congress from 2005 to 2007.
The Fund is also supporting research on administrative costs stemming from the nation's fragmented system of health coverage. Because providers care for patients insured by various private and public plans, they must contend with multiple payment schedules, claims forms, credentialing requirements, and other regulations—a degree of complexity that creates excess costs as well as barriers to improving quality of care. The Fund and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have teamed up to sponsor an investigation into the scope of the problem, the sources of the highest costs, and possible public and private remedies. Fund-supported researchers at AcademyHealth, meanwhile, are conducting case studies of health care organizations' efforts to reduce administrative complexity.
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